Biology 113 Assignment #2
Scientists base their research on what other researchers have found before. It is very important for a scientist to know this information so that they can design an experiment properly. The way that scientists track what has been done previously is by perusing the “literature.”
That is, scientists publish the results of their studies in journals that use expert reviewers to verify that the experiment was done correctly and the results are being reported accurately. Therefore, before conducting an experiment, a scientist should become very familiar with all previous work by reading previously published papers on the topic.
You have proposed an experiment. Has it been done before? Has someone worked with your organism before? Has your question been asked about another organism? If your exact experiment has already been done, is it worth repeating? Could you improve on the previous experiment? Let’s find out!
- List 5 – 10 keywords that might help you find important papers:
- Go to Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com) and type in your organism. How many articles were found? ___________________
- Now, try to be more specific, type in your organism’s scientific name (Genus species). If you don’t know what it is, search Google or Yahoo or whatever. Now how many hits do you get? _____________________
- Still too many articles? You can add another of your search words using AND. For instance, Genusspecies AND metabolism. Continue this process with any combination of your keywords until the list of articles seem manageable. You can also filter by date if necessary. What combination of words did you use to get a list of less than 100 articles?
- Notice that some of the articles indicate that they are available from King’s. (If you do not see this, go to the settings button in the upper right. Click on “settings” and then on “Library Links” in the subsequent window. You should be able to choose “King’s.”) Click on any King’s link. In the following page, click on “Article” (if King’s has the hard copy, it will indicate this). You may have to log into the King’s site, but eventually you should be able to get a PDF of the paper. Save this.
- Repeat the process and find three journal articles which may help with your study. Cite them using CSE format (shown in Pechenik) here:
- Read the abstracts of these three papers. List some facts that may be important for your study. (At this point in your career, you may not be able to read and understand the papers in their entirety).
- Now, add this information in the form of an introductory paragraph to your proposed experiment following the guidelines set. Turn in your revised proposal with citations next week along with this sheet.