Often times, science findings in the media are overinterpreted or misrepresented to have more of an effect on their readers. The purpose of this assignment is to understand how media reports may change our interpretation of scientific findings and to give you the skills to read science media critically.
For this assignment, you will need a science news article and the original published paper the article is reporting on. In your lab section’s discussion page, write a discussion post of at least 250 words describing the news article about a scientific discovery or concept related to the topics of this class and how accurately that article represents the original findings from the paper it is reporting on. An example of a topics you may review are climate change, evolution, the fossil record, the climate record, and DNA. Try to include in your post what aspects from the original scientific paper the article writers got scientifically correct, and what aspects they got scientifically wrong, misrepresented, or exaggerated! Additionally, be sure to link the original scientific paper and the media report on it.
An example would be to write on the science news article “Cannibalism in the womb may have helped megalodon sharks become giants” (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-megalodon-shark-teeth-cannabilism-womb) and the corresponding published paper “Body, jaw, and dentition lengths of macrophagous lamniform sharks, and body size evolution in Lamniformes with special reference to ‘off-the-scale’ gigantism of the megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon” (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2020.1812598). You may access most published articles through the UCR online Library. Please contact your TA if you cannot read a published article you would like to write on.
