I am hoping that there is some collective wisdom at the well for me tonight. I was planning to use a couple of media reports and primary articles to have students compare the quality of the information presented in them. I had hoped to have students read the media reports; answer a number of questions about quality and then look to the source papers to find the answers. Bah! Not working too well.
Now maybe I am a stickler, but, on rereading the journal articles I found myself completely dissatisfied with all the weaknesses of the published papers! They were either too hard for me (let alone freshmen with no stats classes behind them) to understand the results, or seemed to minimize the correlation is not causation argument. BIG DEEP SIGH. Or they simply had no answers to the important questions. I had been hoping to use them just for that reason: the media outlets clearly took the results too far. But now I see that the source articles are drawing more grandiose conclusions than their data warrant! This seems to be a popular theme of late. So, do any of you use this activity. What articles do you use? What are your criteria? Are mine too stringent? Help?! Here are the articles I was going to use: Here are Mike's links from this morning: http://www.asanet.org/documents/press/pdfs/AM_2012_Carolyn_Hsu_News_Release.pdf Note that this is just a brief report and lacks detail. Popular media: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2012/08/20/health-buzz-college-binge-drinkers-report-being-happier And here: http://scienceblog.com/56149/binge-drinking-college-students-are-happier-than-their-non-binge-drinking-peers/ And here: http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/08/20/binge-drinking-makes-students-happy And here, on the LiveScience website: http://www.livescience.com/22512-college-binge-drinkers-happier.html Here are the articles about caffeine, women and depression: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/09/27/140837983/caffeinated-women-may-be-fighting-depression-with-every-cup and http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/26/health/women-depression-coffee/index.html and the source article: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1105943 I did get the whole article for this one and found myself completely unable to evaluate their statistics. Here are the articles about sexual activity and song lyrics: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14227775/ns/health-sexual_health/t/dirty-song-lyrics-can-prompt-early-teen-sex/ and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5629465 and the source article http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/118/2/e430.full.pdf+html for stressed men and heavy women: http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/09/why-stressed-out-men-prefer-heavier-women/ and http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/health/stressed-out-men-find-heavier-women-attractive and the source paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0042593 Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=19923 or send a blank email to leave-19923-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
