Physical Science for Middle Grades Teachers: Fall 2012: Science In the Media: Sign up for weekly presentations as teams

SCIENCE IN THE MEDIA

Here's how you signed up:
Sept 25: Coomes/Rankin
Oct 2: Madison/Alexis (illness; reschedule)
Oct 8:     Fall Break
Oct 16:   Siobhan/Tarver
Oct 23:   Maggie O'/Tynishia
Oct 30:   Maci/Haley B; Madison/Alexis
Nov 6:     Bullard/Thomason and Starr/Boutwell
Nov 13:   Present to A Scientist (No Science in the Media)
Nov 20: Thanksgiving
Nov 27:   Kelly/Brianna/Sara

Goal: critical reading of popular science for relevance, authority and scientific claims

Activity: We will complete and inclass/out-of-class activity to learn how to critically assess the reliability of online sources in science. It is intended to help non-science majors think more critically about the scienctific information you receive from popular sources. The activity will be handed out to you in class.

Activity: We will spend the first 15 minutes in class on science in the media presentations beginning on Tuesday, September 26 2012. You must sign up as teams of two. The topics should be hot topics in science news. Information and nstructions are given below.

Some information

A primary source in science is one where the authors directly participated in the research. They filled the test tubes, analyzed the data, or designed the particle accelerator, or at least supervised those who did. Many, but not all, journal articles are primary sources—particularly original research articles.

A secondary source is a source presenting and placing in context information originally reported by different authors. These include literature reviews, systematic review articles, topical monographs, specialist textbooks, handbooks, and white papers by major scientific associations. News reports are also secondary sources, but should be used with caution as they are seldom written by persons with disciplinary expertise. An appropriate secondary source is one that is published by a reputable publisher, is written by one or more experts in the field, and is peer reviewed. University presses and other publishing houses known for publishing reliable science books will document their review process. Do not confuse a scientific review (the article/document) with peer review (the activity).

A tertiary source usually summarizes a range of secondary sources. Encyclopedias, general textbooks, popular science books, and tables of values are tertiary sources.

Where can I find copies of scientific journal articles?

Most univeristy libraries often have copies of well-known scientific journals. Community libraries, and hospital libraries may have a range and older issues of these journals. Some journals also have articles available on their Web sites. Some Web sites offer the articles free of charge, but others may require you to register with the site and pay a nominal fee. You will need the citation for the article to find it either at the library or on a Web site. See the answer to the previous question for an example citation.

What does it mean if an article or journal is "peer reviewed" or "refereed" and how will I know?

Scientific journals require research articles to go through a process called "peer review." During peer review, scientific experts who were not connected to the study review the article and decide whether it was done properly and whether the findings have merit. Only studies that pass peer review get published. The Peer Review is a process ensures that the articles that are published represent the best scholarship currently available. When an article is submitted to a peer reviewed journal, the editors send it out to other scholars in the same field (the author's peers) to get their opinion on the quality of the scholarship, its relevance to the field, its appropriateness for the journal, etc. Usually, you can tell if an article is refereed or peer reviewed just by looking. A scholarly journal is visibly different from other magazines, but occasionally it can be hard to tell. So to check, you can use Galileo search index, for example, and type in the journal in which the article is published. Among other information, you should receive a report that that indicates whether the journal contains articles that are peer reviewed or not.

Publications that don't use peer review (Time, Cosmo, Vibe) just rely on the judgement of the editors whether an article is up to snuff or not. That's why you can't count on them for solid, scientific scholarship.

What does it mean when researchers say that results are "statistically significant?"

In the case of health problems, for example, many health problems occur for a variety of reasons, including chance. Therefore, researchers must determine if a health effect they are studying might have occurred in study participants as a result of chance alone. Specifically, "statistical significance" refers to a finding in a research study that is larger or smaller than would be expected by chance alone.

Statistical significance is expressed in scientific journals by a probability value (p-value). P-values are calculated using a statistical formula. In the case of health studies, these might include the number of people and health effects being studied and may be designed to answer the question, "Could a group of this many people, who all experienced a common exposure, have had this health problem in common by chance alone?" A finding is considered statistically significant if there is less than a 5% probability (p=.05 or less) that the findings resulted from chance. Conversely, if there is greater than a 5% probability (p=.06 or greater) that a finding resulted from chance, the finding is not statistically significant.

Interesting references:

http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/genetics/Literature/articles/CPR-special-resources/reliability.htm

Instructions

Typically, poular online science sources summarize articles. You will find an interesting popular science piece and evaluate what the online resource reports AS WELL AS the article. Each team will provide a 1-slide PowerPoint synopsis of the information that you've found to the class.

The slide should include the title of the article, the source, and the authors of the presented material. For example, Middle Grades teacher designs artificial eye from shrimp shells. JoAnn Previts. Science News, Septemeber 12, 2012.

The slide should reference the scientists/engineers, etc. and the institution, organization or agency that identifies where the scientific activity occurred. For example, Dan Bauer, senor pre-service education major at Georgia College in Milledgeville, GA.

Your presentation should respond to the following questions:

Is this research done by a single author or multiple authors?
Why might this be important to know?
What question (hypothesis) is the author trying to answer? In other words, what is the author’s argument or position?
What type of evidence was presented to answer the question?
Can you identify any assumptions that the authors made?

Please provide a pdf file of the article associated with the popular science resource that you are presenting. After your presentation, please remember to e-mail to me your PPT slide.

Here is a listing of sources that claim to provide science news.