Directions: For the earlier projects in this class, I asked you to go out and perform an experiment and then write about it. This time, it’s a library exercise.
Find a news article related to recent developments in some type of science, whether medicine, social science, physics, or something else. 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).
Your task is to critique the article. Not just to summarize or interpret it, but to figure out what might be wrong with it. You might have to look through several articles to pick out one with interesting mistakes or problems.
You should question the source, methods, results, and conclusion.
1) Question the source. If the article is about a recent study or experiment, then who did the study? Are they impartial? Or biased? Who paid for the study? If it was a study of a product paid for by the manufacturer, the results might be overly rosy. If it was a nonprofit group or foundation, what are their political leanings or prejudices?
2) Question the methods. If the article tells you about how the study was conducted, decide whether or not it was done well. Does the author describe how the sample was selected? If it was a survey, how were the questions phrased? If the article doesn’t tell you these things, that’s a weakness.
3) Question the results. What was the sample size? Was it large enough? Does the article talk about margin of error? Is it possible that the apparently interesting results could be a coincidence?
4) Question the conclusion. What did the scientists really find, and what are the headlines saying? Remember correlation is not causation—just because two things tend to happen at the same time does not mean that one causes another.
Please show me your article as soon as you select it, so I can confirm that it is a good choice. Make sure that it’s long enough to provide some meat, but not so long and technical that you don’t understand it. When you submit your final project, include a link to or copy of the original article.
This project is due at the end of the course.
