Directions:\u00a0 For the earlier projects in this class, I asked you to go out and perform an experiment and then write about it.\u00a0 This time, it\u2019s a library exercise.<\/p>\n
Find a news article related to recent developments in some type of science, whether medicine, social science, physics, or something else.\u00a0 You can find it in a newspaper, magazine, or on the Internet, but if you use the Internet, the source must be a real media company (nytimes.com, foxnews.com, etc).<\/p>\n
Your task is to critique the article.\u00a0 Not just to summarize or interpret it, but to figure out what might be wrong with it.\u00a0 You might have to look through several articles to pick out one with interesting mistakes or problems.<\/p>\n
You should question the source, methods, results, and conclusion.<\/p>\n
1) Question the source.\u00a0 If the article is about a recent study or experiment, then who did the study?\u00a0 Are they impartial?\u00a0 Or biased?\u00a0 Who paid for the study?\u00a0 If it was a study of a product paid for by the manufacturer, the results might be overly rosy.\u00a0 If it was a nonprofit group or foundation, what are their political leanings or prejudices?<\/p>\n
2) Question the methods.\u00a0 If the article tells you about how the study was conducted, decide whether or not it was done well.\u00a0 Does the author describe how the sample was selected?\u00a0 If it was a survey, how were the questions phrased?\u00a0 If the article doesn\u2019t tell you these things, that\u2019s a weakness.<\/p>\n
3) Question the results.\u00a0 What was the sample size?\u00a0 Was it large enough?\u00a0 Does the article talk about margin of error?\u00a0 Is it possible that the apparently interesting results could be a coincidence?<\/p>\n
4) Question the conclusion.\u00a0 What did the scientists really find, and what are the headlines saying?\u00a0 Remember correlation is not causation\u2014just because two things tend to happen at the same time does not mean that one causes another.<\/p>\n
Please show me your article as soon as you select it, so I can confirm that it is a good choice.\u00a0 Make sure that it\u2019s long enough to provide some meat, but not so long and technical that you don\u2019t understand it.\u00a0 When you submit your final project, include a link to or copy of the original article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Directions:\u00a0 For the earlier projects in this class, I asked you to go out and perform an experiment and then write about it.\u00a0 This time, it\u2019s a library exercise. Find a news article related to recent developments in some type of science, whether medicine, social science, physics, or something else.\u00a0 You can find it in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-96804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}