Scientific or Biographic?

            This week I wanted to explore part of the New York Times that I’d never investigated before. After scanning the bar of categories on the website’s left-hand side, the heading, “Science” popped out at me.

            The first article was titled “Digging Deep into DNA” and a photo of the featured scientist, Dr. Hopi Hoekstra of Harvard University, with a tranquilized bear accompanied the headline. Interesting, I thought, and began to read. After a few paragraphs, I was surprised to find that the article described Dr. Hoekstra’s research on the effects of mouse DNA on burrow construction, not the DNA of bears. The Times used the picture of the bear to grab people’s attention and prompt them to read.

DNA

            Looking more closely at the article’s construction, the sourcing in “Digging Deep into DNA” impressed me while the lack of real scientific description disappointed. The Times reports about Dr. Hoekstra’s background of education and states that she received tenure from Harvard at age 37; clearly she is a qualified researcher. It continues to say that the well-respected scientific journal, Nature, published her discovery that four areas of DNA influence the burrow construction of mice.

Dr. Hopi Hoekstra

From this point on, however, scientific discussion drops out of the article and Dr. Hoekstra’s biography begins. The section following the brief overview of her research is titled “From Volleyball to Research” and outlines Dr. Hopi Hoekstra’s journey from high school to college to filed work. The first line of this section stated, “Dr. Hoekstra spends a lot of time explaining that her first name has nothing to do with the Native American Hopi tribe.” Hopi was apparently a nickname from her grandmother that stuck, but How does this relate to science? I wondered. The next and final section headed, “A Team Player” demonstrates Dr. Hoekstra’s willingness to engage graduate students in her research and reach out to interested scientists. Again, is this science? In my biology 570 class, I need to write a scientific research paper on a Multiple Sclerosis. The paper must elaborate on the chemical, molecular and cellular effects of MS as well as its impact on tissues, organ complexes, and on the entire body. We must write with interesting, well-researched accuracy that a History or English major could understand. If I stated that MS is an autoimmune disease that demyelinates nerve axons and then wrote the biography of an expert in MS immunology, my teacher would not consider this a scientific piece. A 1 would loom in my future.

The Time’s “Science” section disappointed me with the lack of actual scientific description. While I learned briefly about Dr. Hoekstra’s research from credible sources, I felt that I was reading a biography, which does not constitute science.

Links:
"Digging Deep into DNA"
Here's another "scientific" article. The author cites "Studies" as his scientific source. "That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer"