These two articles were both published in the New York Times.The article by Lawrence Altman, “When Peer Reviews Produces Unsound Science” is about the flaws of peer reviews. The article gave several examples of where the review was faulty, and another example of where the peer review took too long. The importance of peer review is stressed especially in the science world. The example where the peer review took too long and was too course was the cure for a disease, small pox. The cure was to be published in 1796 however was not published until two centuries later. The second article is by Andrew Renkin, “Climate Experts Tussle Over Details. Public gets Whiplash”. This particular article is about how the media ruins the severity of the issue over global warming. The article claims that the media gives scientists ” false sense of uncertainty” pertaining to the issue.
Through reading these two articles I learned the importance and sometimes harshness of peer editing especially in the scientific realm. I did not learn that much from the second article other than it was new news to me. I do not think personally that scientist are clueless about global warming due to the media reports. These articles can be applied to everyday life, I will definitely pay more attention to the media reporting on global warming and be more attentive to the content and tone in which being reported. I don’t really feel like these articles pertained to anything we did in class except maybe peer editing however we never did peer editing or reviewing in class, which I think would be a good exercise.
