Honors 152 - Dr. Scholtens

Guidelines for Writing a Critique

Syllabus	Lecture terms	Discussion questions
Sample exam questions	Intro bio mission statement	Schedule

Your written assignment this term will be a critique of a scientific article of your choice that pertains to the material we are covering this term. This leaves open virtually endless possible choices, but also puts the burden on you to take the time to find an article you would like to critique. The timetable for this assignment is as follows:

February 26 - Articles should be chosen and approved. This means you should show me the article before this date so that if you come on February 26 with an unacceptable article, you can still change it. These articles should be from what is referred to as the primary literature, information that is being reported by scientists for the first time in journals refereed by their peers. This does not include articles from sources such as Scientific American where scientists summarize the information on a topic that has previously been reported. If you have questions about what qualifies please ask. We will be reading several articles from the primary literature for our discussions this term. As we do this you should get a better idea of what you should look for in the articles.

March 30 - Polished draft of the critique due. This should not be something written the night before. Ideally you will feel like this is a finished product. You will submit this along with a copy of the article. I will read these, comment on your critique and return it the following week for revision.

April 22 - Final version of critique due. This should incorporate the comments I suggested on the first draft.

Points to be covered in the critique:

1. Summarize the article including:
   • the question being addressed (what is their hypothesis),
   • the main methods used,
   • results, and
   • conclusions.
2. Evaluate the question being addressed including:
   • is it an appropriate problem for scientific inquiry
   • is the author(s) the first to address this question or is he or she checking someone else's work.
3. Evaluate the methods including:
   • are the experiments appropriate to answer the question
   • did they consider alternative hypotheses
   • did they make an honest effort to refute their hypothesis
   • are there other experiments they might have considered
4. Evaluate the conclusions including:
   • do the results support their conclusions
   • do they make appropriate use of other scientists' work
   • do the results suggest additional questions or experiments that could be done
   • have they convinced you

The point distribution for this assignment will be as follows:

The first draft will be evaluated based on whether an effort has been made to present these points in a reasonably polished form. Spelling, grammar, etc. should be checked.

The final draft will be evaluated on all the above points and your incorporation of the comments from the first draft. The heavy weighting on the final draft is designed to encourage you to make significant revisions if necessary from the first draft. This is often necessary in scientific writing. I do not know a single scientist who does not revise every paper multiple times, often changing the entire structure of the paper.

All papers (both drafts) must be typed or printed from a high quality printer (not a dot matrix printer). I strongly encourage you to make use of the campus computer facilities. Take the time to learn a word processing program, if you haven't already. They make revisions of a paper much less daunting and spelling and grammar can often be checked easily. Take advantage of the technology available.

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