Due at the start of class on Tuesday Oct 8th, 2002.
Science is not static information in a textbook. It is something that people do to learn how the world works. Even as much as we have learned about the world in the past 200 years, there is a far greater number of interesting and important questions than there are scientists to investigate them. Though a very tiny fraction of current research ever makes the popular news, this is the primary means by which most people learn about current events in science. This project has many potential purposes, but there are two overarching goals: one is to get you thinking about the significance of the science itself, and the other to think about the quality of the news you are reading.
1. Please search on the Internet or another source for a news article on a new discovery or interpretation of ancient life of from the Cenozoic Era (the interval of time we have been studying and will continue studying through at least Oct 3rd. The article should have been written 1997 or later. Print or photocopy the article, as you will turn this part in. It will also be handy for reading closely to have a "hardcopy."
Suggestion: Use an Internet search engine such as Google to make a search. I would suggest using the terms “science” and “news” in the search, and to modify it with “mastodon” or “homind” or “Ice Age” or “overkill” or some other word that seems prominent and interesting from our course. Some topics get a lot more research and news, depending on the amount of research going on and the interest of the general public.
2. Find the original reference that the news was based upon and photocopy it. For example, the article may state that the news appeared in the scientific journal Science or Nature. Science and Nature are the most read journals in the science, and are in the Ithaca College library; they are also available on-line through Ithaca College. The articles are usually only 3-4 pages long. The article may give the date of the issue, or you may need to figure it out from the publication date of the news. Print or photocopy the article.
Note: for many students who have no previous experience with "primary literature," this may be confusing. Nearly all scientific literature is first written for and reviewed by other scientists, who critique it and make sure it is of sufficient quality for publication. Only then (usually) do reporters from newspapers and magazines with general audiences write an article. (There are exceptions to the rule, but this is the generality.) So you are looking for that original scientific article.
Suggestion: “Journals” are simply magazines for specialized purposes. In scientific contexts, journals are usually referenced by “volume,” “number,” rather than month, but in the media context you may end up looking by date instead.
3. Find one more popular article on the same topic from a popular news source and print or copy it. By popular, I mean newspaper or magazine for the general reader, not articles written by scientists for other scientists. This is to show that different reporters for different audiences may report scientific discoveries in somewhat different ways. Again, print or photocopy the article.
Suggestion: Use keywords matching the topic of the article you chose to narrow your search. Perhaps you found an article on a new species of ancient mammal. You could use the name of the mammal and scientific researcher that you learned from the scientific article (or the first media article) to track down other articles specifically about this research.
Note: Some students find other articles that are generally on the same topic, but not necessarily on the same piece of research. Please try to find the latter.
Question: What if my article doesn’t give the reference for the original technical article? Do an internet search and see if you can find another article that does. It may (or may not) take you a little while to find the right piece of research.
Example:
This is an example from some research that we have not yet covered in our class.
I found an article at
www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/11_6_99/fob1.htm
on Cambrian fish. This article is a fairly high level news article written by scientists for other scientists. From this I learned the original article:
Shu, D.-G. . . . S.C. Morris, et al. 1999 Lower Cambrian vertebrates from south China. Nature 402 (Nov. 4): 42.
Then I did a narrower search to find more articles on this particular piece of news and found something from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_504000/504776.stm
Please answer the following concisely. I am not looking for long comprehensive explanations, but for short insightful answers that show you get the main point. There isn’t one “right” answer. There are numerous sources of literature and numerous ways to answer each question, so I don’t expect to see any identical papers.
Questions:
1. In one sentence, what is the most important major new finding expressed in the original article? (This is a simple statement of what the finding is, not why it is important.)
2. In one sentence, why was it surprising or important scientifically? (This is why the research is important, not a description again of what was found.)
3. In one or a few sentences, what is the basis for the discovery? That is, what is the age and locality of the fossils? Is the discovery a new fossil find, or re-interpretation of fossils that had been previously described?
4. In one sentence, what is the basis for the geological age, or is it not given? (a particular kind of radiometric dating? Biostratigraphy? Tree rings? Some combination?) You may need to hunt in the original scientific article.
5. Are there any uncertainties about the data or interpretation that make you think that this article may be questioned presently or in the future by other scientists? (This might (or might not) be presented in the scientific article itself.)
7. In what ways (in terms of content presented) does the original scientific article differ from the two news articles about it? Make a list of 3-5 differences for each of the two news articles.
What to turn in:
Your answers typed on standard letter-sized paper, with your name and the topic of the papers written at the top.
Copies of each of the three articles stapled to your answers.