Media project: Articles on new research about events in the history of life, Precambrian – Devonian

History of Life

 

Due at the start of class on Th Oct 25th, 2001.

 

                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. 

 

Directions

 

1.       Please search on the Internet or another source for a news article on a new discovery or interpretation of ancient life of sometime between the Precambrian and the Devonian.  The article should have been written 1996 or later. Print or photocopy the article.

 

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 “Cambrian” or “Precambrian” or “Burgess” or “Ediacaran” or some other word that seems prominent and interesting. 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; 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.

 

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 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. 

 

Suggestion: Use keywords matching the topic of the article you chose to narrow your search. Perhaps you found an article a primitive “fish” found in the Chengjiang fauna of China. Your search might now include “Chengjiang” or “primitive fish” to find other articles on this particular research.

 

Question: What if my article doesn’t give the reference for the original technical article?

1)       Do an internet search and see if you can find another article that does.

2)       Find an article written by a scientist for another scientist (some scientists read science news or perspective pieces so they know what’s going on outside their field).

3)       If you can’t find any scientific reference, then obtain three articles on the topic and choose the one that seems to be highest quality as the scientific reference. Please do this as a last resort.

 

Example:

 

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?

 

2. In one sentence, why was it surprising or important?

 

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? (a particular kind of radiometric dating? Biostratigraphy? Tree rings? Some combination?)

 

5. Can you think of any uncertainties about the evidence from the fossil preservation and/or the dating?

 

6. 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?

 

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.