Peer-Reviewed Literature and Search Engine Assignment Part I/II are Due Monday Sept 10 Part 1: Peer Reviewed Publications Assignment: 10 points
Information communicated in Peer-Reviewed Publications has been examined by other scientists to determine if the information is correct, reasonable and valid prior to its being published in a “Peer-Reviewed Journal”. When a publication is submitted to a publisher, the editor will send it to several other researchers to determine if it should be published, typically in an anonymous fashion. These folks read the proposed paper and determine if the content is valid and ‘worthy’ of publication. The editor at the journal then gives it a thumbs-up (it gets published), a thumbs down (it is not published), or a thumbs-up IF certain problems in the paper can be addressed.
Information published in books, websites, popular (“lay”) magazines, advertisements and on T.V. is almost invariably reviewed by an Editor, and not the type of material we use professionally. The information from these sources, while sometimes quite valuable, is not typically reviewed by other Scientists (we are all scientists right?). Website and book editors can be biased in their interpretation and their purpose. Information presented in these media sources should be viewed as questionable and should not be considered as “factual” by good scientists like yourselves. This can be confusing because some sources can look very prestigious, (“….from the Harvard Medical School says….”), but can still be very biased in the presentation of information.
For instance, to improve profits a drug company might publish only positive information about a drug that can suppress cancer, and it might “forget” to mention that the same drug causes heart disease. Often journals are pressured to publish questionably reproducible studies because drug companies provide millions of dollars for lucrative advertisingin the same journals. This can create a “if you don’t publish our stuff, we don’t place our add and you go bankrupt” sort of thing. Peer-review gives other researchers a chance to say some claim is unjustified and leave the journal out of the “blame game”.
Peer-review is the ideal and it usually works, although sometimes poor science is still published in peer-reviewed journals. It is always up to you the reader to make the call: Do you believe what they say or not? As a Scientist, the quality of your reputation rests on the validity of your word. If you are a physician or a laboratory technician, the actions you make based on the information you collect could determine if a person lives or dies, if you are well paid or the focus of a lawsuit. The average medical liability indemnity payment in 2010 was $331,947—an increase of 11.5% since 2001 ().For this project, you will identify ONE TOPIC of interest to you and your interests/applications in Cell Biology. You may want to think ahead and use this topic as your Term Paper Topic. The purpose of this exercise is to have you evaluate and compare scientific information from different sources - some of them will be undoubtedly more reliable and complete than others.
Here are the details for this assignment (Part One):
1) You need to find information from: A) a webpage; B) an article in a newspaper/popular magazine; C) a book; and D) from a Peer Reviewed scientific journal (can you find it in PubMed or Google Scholar?).
2) Your paper must be word-processed, single-spaced, using 12-point font and 1-inch margins. The total text should be a ½-1 pagesingle spaced in length, followed by a reference section at end.
3) Your paper should have a section for each type of information source (A-D above-4 sections). Discuss how each presents information – with primary focus being to comparing and contrasting the quality/advantages/limitations of the different sources:
a) How are they the same or different? (Consider completeness, accuracy, depth of information, and bias)
b)Which source is the most reliable?
c)If your life depended on the information being correct, which source would you choose?
4) Your paper must be easily read and understood - be sure you proofread it and "spell-check" it before you turn it in.
5) You must completely identify your sources on a separate reference section at end. Also provide a paper copy of just the first page of each of these sources as well (four 1st pages for each types of source).
. . a) For a webpage: give the author and complete URL.
This was for an osteoporosis newsletter from the National Osteoporosis Foundation
. . b) For a book: give the author, complete title, publisher and date of publication, and page numbers
. . c) For an article in a Peer Reviewed scientific journal: give the author, complete title, name of journal, year, volume # and page numbers. Example: Carlson JR, Bauer BA, Vincent A, Limburg PJ, Wilson T. Reading the tea leaves: anticarcinogenic properties of (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate. Mayo Clin Proc 2007; 82:725-732.
. . d) For an article in a popular magazine: give author, complete title, name and date of the magazine, and pages.
Part #2: Peer-Reviewed Literature Searches on the Web: 10 points
Choose 3 key words related to the topic used in Part #1 and use these three words on three different Web-based search engines to collect data. The library lists some search engines that you may find useful at:
Peer-reviewed journal search engines that will provide printable abstracts of the paper for free:
PUBMED: For medically related topics:
AGRICOLA: For agricultural/ecology related topics:
Other search engines such as exist and you are welcome to use them IF THEY search mostly peer-reviewed journals. Try the WSU website
Yahoo, Goggle and others do nice searches and some items it finds are “GREAT”, but much of what is pulled up will be of questionable validity, much of it is down-right bogus. Google Scholar is an ok program to use however. This might be a good place to find magazine and newspaper articles and some background material about a topic, but it is seldom material to stake your career upon.
For each search indicate the key words used, website used (Full URL), total number of articles retrieved. Print two abstracts from at least two of the search engine websites you choose to use. Print a page from each of the other two websites you used.
(To get the 10 points):Provide the answers to this set of questions:
a) 2pts: Go to PubMed and use these three searches to get some practice with limiting your search:
“Mitochondria”: number of hits?______
“Mitochondria Dog”: number of hits?______
“Mitochondria Dog DNA”: number of hits?______
“Mitochondria Dog DNA malaria”: number of hits?______
If no hits come up, does this absolutely mean that articles do not exist with the key-words you chose to search for? Yes or No? Why?
Try “Limiting” your search to a given number of years. Do you get the same number of hits? (give #s above)
8pts: Now that you have the numbers for the above mitochondria search, Create your own search string starting with one word and expand it to 2, 3 and 4 words using four different websites. Write the key words used and the number of “hits” brought up by each more limiting search: one word search, two word, three word and four words too.
b) 2 Peer-reviewed search sites with a printed abstract from each.
c) 2 Lay-person (i.e. yahoo or EbScoHost) websites with a page printed from each.
d) Print one full paper to go along with one of the abstracts to show the diffence between abstract and full paper.
e) Write a paragraph on how increasing or decreasing the number of words in the search increased/decreased the number of “hits” brought up in these searches.
The WSU library has some of these journals, please look at the list:
Search Engines:
Free Periodicals at WSU (not all peer-reviewed):
Quite a few other periodicals can be found at Science Direct, a clearing house for around 1,400 different peer-reviewed journals:
If we don’t have it at WSU or cannot get it through shared library resources and you cannot get the article for free anywhere else, you can request it and the library will get it for free (takes 1-2 weeks). The online application can be obtained at the following WSU site: