My Sources

      A credible paper needs to have credible sources and sources that lend to the work as a whole, not things just there to give the work a look of having facts. A good source will have real use to the author and the audience, informing them both deeper on the subject presented.
       To ensure I have the best sources for my work I will present all 10 of them.

mirko. "[Research]" 03/02/2015 via Flickr.
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1. Power Failure: Why Small Sample Size Undermines the Reliability of Neuroscience
       This source is from an online review journal, Nature Reviews, specifically the title on Neuroscience. As a source it is fairly credible; specifically made to report scientific news and cater to those who wish to read in depth on some subject.
       There are multiple authors of this source, which I spoke about in my post on the evaluation of general sources. All of them are quite qualified and give their credentials.
       The source was published online on April 10, 2013. Since this source is the start of the controversy this date is the catalyst for the discourse as a whole. In general world news there was not anything of note that would have affected the announcement of this news or the general publishing of it.
       This source is the most important because it starts the controversy, the stakeholders within this source are the authors and they have renown and credibility weighing on their paper and study being of merit. The information within this article gives the base of what is built on throughout the course of the controversy and it is what generated the desire to research more into the statistical power within neuroscience.

2.  Unreliable Neuroscience? Why Power Matters

    The source for this article is the Guardian US, an American online source of the British newspaper. The credibility of this newspaper, or the online US source at least, only goes back five years, but the original British work formed in 1821. The newspaper then has the credibility of many years of reliability. 

        The author of this source is Kate Button, a research psychologist at the University of Bristol. She has a degree in neuroscience from Fitzwilliam College, so she has the credentials for speaking about this study and discussing its reliability in her own field. 

        This source came out the exact same day that the first source came out, so this obviously affects how the source was received. The same day posting is important, because even if the paper was originally not online the author of this source made a conscious decision to post her commentary the same time the source did become available to a much larger crowd. This could have generated more readership for the original source, since the audience reading this newspaper article would then go read the original paper. 

       The information that this source offers is practically a synopsis of the main source; the author is explaining the information and reasoning behind the original study as well as some deeper explanation of importance of small sample sizes. The more quick reference style of this source allows for a more accessible reading than the scientific article published in a journal, allowing for a broader range of readers to understand the importance of this study.

3. Neuroscience Cannae Do It Cap’n, It Doesn’t Have the Power 

       The source for this article is the National Geographic, a fairly reliable source for academic works or articles; as it is focused on educating people on scientific happening to view the world more broadly.

       The author of this source is Ed Yong, a science writer for the Atlantic and makes blog posts for National Geographic about scientific phenomena. He has credibility because he has been writing for at least the past five years within this field, if not more.

       This source also came out the same day that the main source was posted online, obviously to draw attention to the original source; the first time brought to attention as well that this is all happening around the time that President Obama had launched the initiative for mapping all the neurons in the brain, and European efforts to aid in the process; an important situation distinction; the main study came out in time to put some negative light upon how the studies within neuroscience are conducted.

       Ed Yong's source about this topic not only describes how this study comes in light of President Obama's initiative for mapping the entire brain, but he helps to shed light into how this problem isn't just neuroscience specific and plagues multiple fields of study. He also goes into detail how it might be gone about to raise the statistical power within the field of neuroscience, providing a possible solution to the controversy.

4. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

      The source for this article is an organization called the Public Library of Science (PLOS) which is an advocate and publisher for "Open Access" Research; the specific section of PLOS this research comes from is the Medicine section. This source has fair amount of credibility because of it's use as a research engine that has specific use and ensures that the works published within it have been reviewed for accuracy.

       The author for this work is John P.A. Ionannidis. This man is heavily certified to write any sort of medical text or scientific article; having held multiple administrative and academic positions, like professorships, and receiving many awards and honors for his work. So I would consider this one of the more credible sources for this topic.

      This specific work is actually before the main controversy began, being published online instead in August of 2005, but it was sighted in the main source as a basis for their research so it may have the proclivity of being extremely important. In regards to other news around this time, Hurricane Katrina had just occurred, or was occurring in fact, and perhaps this story was not as wide spread because of other concerns at the time.

      The information provided in this article may have helped stimulate the idea for the original source of the controversy. This source details how, in general, research studies are increasingly discovered to not be true because they had a small sample size. Most likely the inspiration for Button et al. to specifically look into the neuroscience studies statistical power, and give them backup in the research that this is a problem for most scientific fields.

5. Many Neuroscience Studies May Be Based on Bad Statistics

     The source for this article is the online magazine WIRED which talks about how new discoveries may affect everyday life. This source is pretty credible because of the well known quality of it for facts of a scientific nature.

     The author of this source is Greg Miller, a science journalist, both freelance and previously the senior writer at some news sites, who has earned a PhD in Neuroscience; so most definitely has the credibility to discuss this topic in depth. He also completed a graduate science writing program so his specialty is writing for science.

      This article came out on the 15th of April of 2003, just a few days after the main source and the other articles came out, so most likely this author, like the rest, is trying to just bring the information more out into the world and let people know what's happening. So the timeline for this article is nearly identical to the others, except by that date maybe more people would have read the original source.

      Like other sources published so close to the publishing of the original main source, this source mostly breaks down what the statistical power means and how this affects the outcome of studies.

Analysis of My Rhetorical SItuation

     The rhetorical situation of any sort of writing, whether actual physical writing or another form of media, is important to consider. Understanding the context for a work before even making it insures that the work will fit to what the author wishes to make it. The rhetorical situation of a work is the purpose, author, and audience to the work within the context of the story.

Who Are You?
       The audience to any work is probably the most important part, because the audience are especially concerned with the purpose of the work. For my rhetorical situation the audience is specific to not only those who are interested in neuroscience but also those who are willing to read about statistical analysis and actually understand its significance. The people who will read my quick reference guide on the low statistical power of neuroscience studies most likely will have read the original discourse papers; or have a good knowledge about at least the original main source for the controversy and want a breakdown of the arguments against or supporting it.
      The ethnographic breakdown for my audience, or what I can assume of it, will be comprised of educated individuals, I would assume at least some college education. While I would prefer to believe that its possible that there will be an equal amount of men and women reading the reference guide it is more probable that there will be a higher percentage of men reading because there is still a propensity for males to be in STEM fields. I would assume most of them would reside in America because that is where I am posting the work from. It will probably be important to them that my information is accurate, as well as my analysis. It is actually quite daunting to write for such a group that would most likely have studied these cases more thoroughly and understand them better than I.

Kennisland. "Audience" 04/04/2005 via Flickr.
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Why Write at All?
      My purpose for writing this quick reference guide is that I want people to be able to make educated decisions on whether or not they should trust the reliability of studies conducted in neuroscience, without an entire dissection of the controversy like I plan on doing and coalescing, the audience would have to go through each source individually to make a decision. While they should perhaps still do that if the topic is truly so intriguing to them I want to give them an easier time of it. The audience needs to not only understand the study but also the reasons it is so important to the world around them; this study on statistical power could change how neuroscientific studies are conducted and may change what the world now understands about the brain.
      I'm concerned that otherwise the audience may not understand the significance or perhaps they would be confused by some of the extreme statistical information presented within the sources of the controversy.

Who Am I?
     Me being the author of this quick reference guide definitely affects the rhetorical situation of the work. What I personally bring to this work is my own experiences with statistical works and statistical power; it helps me understand the original works better and I can put an interpretation on the works that may not be out already in the world. My specific interest in this topic relates to the research aspect; my aspiration in life right now is to go into research in the field of neuroscience so this topic is very important to me, I want to understand how such things as statistical power truly affect what I want to do, this makes me a good candidate for writing this piece because I have a distinct interest in understanding the controversy in simple terms as much as the audience reading my piece might.

Considering Genre

      Now that the information that is going to be used has been figured out, as well as the subject, it is important to consider the Genre.

But Which One?
      The genre I have decided to go with for this first project is the Quick Reference Guide; I think it is the best option for this project because I can use it to efficiently to educate on the controversy and it is not important to take a side within this postmortem so it is best for just facts being presented. I'm thinking the QRG will be able to get the purpose of the project across without a muddling of the information.

Conventional Conventions 
      The conventions I need to be considering as Production begins is the sort of single web page, image heavy look that is part of the conventions that must be met. I need to begin shortening all the information I have to an easily understandable form as well as the most efficient way to break down the controversy into short paragraphs.

Stress and Distress
     Going into the Production phase of the project I realize I am severely under prepared as well completely overbooked with homework this week and I really need to plan better for the amount of work I need to put into this project. I'm concerned about hitting the deadlines on time, especially since we must have a rough draft for peer review. But I will muddle through and hopefully come out on top of my work.

Therlot, J E. "smiley face stress ball" 05/22/2006 via Flickr.
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Cluster of Stakeholders

      To make the cluster to identify the major stakeholders and their positions about the controversy I used a google drawing to make a bubble chart. To relate the different parts of the cluster I color coded it; the sections of the same color are about the same person or subjects.

Morrison, Alexis. "Cluster" 02/02/2016 via Google Drawing. 

Evaluation of General Sources

      The controversy I've decided to perform a postmortem on within my field is that there is power failure within the field of neuroscience; meaning that the sample sizes for studies partaken in the field are too small to be of statistical importance or to give truthful analysis of a subject. The controversy mostly surrounds one specific work, called " Power Failure: Why Small Sample Size Undermines the Reliability of Neuroscience" by a collaboration of authors, which has sprouted countless analysis and responses. I will evaluate that source as well as a response to it called "Is Neuroscience Really Too Small?" 


Power Failure
    The URL for this main source is http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v14/n5/full/nrn3475.html#B1; having a source end with .com implies that the source is from a commercial entity and that any entity is allowed to register to use it; it has become the main domain. While this could perfectly well be a credible source, the .com does not instill the largest amount of confidence. Depending on what information one is looking for a more specific sort of domain like .edu, for educational organizations only, or .gov, which is limited to use by the government.
     The authors for this source number seven. Katherine S. Button, John P. A. Ioannidis, Claire Mokrysz, Brian A. Nosek, Jonathan Flint, Emma S. J. Robinson, and Marcus R. Munafòl. All of the authors of this source are either Doctors of Philosophy (PhDs), Doctor of Medicine (MD), Doctor of Science (D.Sc.), or Masters in Science (M.Sc.) and PhD students at universities. SO pertaining to the subject they are very qualified to speak on scientific studies.
     The last update of the article may have been in April 2013 when it says the article was "corrected".
     The purpose of this text is to educate the audience about the potential of small sample sizes affecting the reliability of studies within neuroscience. The source is promoting the idea that for neuroscience studies to be more reliable they need larger sample pools from which to test.
      The graphics within this work are primarily graphs and charts showing how different levels of statistical power effect the look of results.
      The position of the paper I would not say is one-sided, however it is taking a side. It has more than a hundred references to prove its credibility and other sources around the web that have responded to the paper have agreed with it's point as well. If the viewers of the website believe the author I would not say anyone directly profits but there can be examples of those that it would be unprofitable for if viewers read and believed it. If a reader agrees with the authors' views then they may go out into the world and believe that any neuroscience study is incorrect or has too small of a sample to make a definitive claim.
      Throughout the text the authors provide multiple links so that the readers may research or look to understand deeper certain concepts. All of the references are linked articles or books with reputable authors.
   

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT. "Dissection of the brain"
02/03/2014 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic 

Really Too Small
     The URL for this source is http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2013/08/10/is-neuroscience-too-small/#.VrFedPlViko. It is like the other source that is is a .com domain and of suspicious credibility.
     The author for this source, which is a blog connected to a magazine, only seems to go by the name "Neuroskeptic". So there is not really much of a way to check how credible the author is, however, a short bio about the person states that they are a British neuroscientist, although there is no proof that I can find, like a name or something of that sort. But from the thousands of discussions on neuroscience subjects within this blog that the author must have some sort of credibility.
      There is no shown update on the post, it was posted after the first article it discusses in August of 2013.
      The purpose of this text is to discuss the first text discussed. It is a sort of response to the article on why neuroscience is messed up by the prominent amount of too small sample sizes. This article specifically educates the readers a little about the subject but mostly it is, as the author proclaims themselves a skeptic, trying to ensure that the source is truly correctly done, which they seem skeptical about.
      The couple of graphics within this blog post are graphs trying to show some mathematical function from the statistics of the first article that this author thinks may have been done incorrectly.
      The position of this paper is that primarily the original article is correct in its statements that there is a power failure and too small sample sizes throughout neuroscience, except that the graphical calculations for the samples may have been done incorrectly. If readers believe what this author says then he profits in getting more credibility while the authors of the other source get discredited and the research does not seem as irrefutable.
      The links in this blog post are primarily to definitions of words that the readers may not understand just off the top of their heads and all the main link of this blog post is the link to the article it is responding to or about.

Reddit and What I Found There

There are many forums through which people can discuss topics or ideas. And throughout the internet there are sites almost specifically for garnering discussions of a type, one such site is Reddit. To truly immerse myself in Reddit to see what discussions are happening in my field I searched through both the neuroscience threads and the cognitive science threads.

What's the Conversation About?
     As with the previous perusals of Twitter, many of the threads throughout Reddit are comprised of articles discussing the latest achievements or findings within the field. The discussions within the cognitive science thread are more dealing with behaviors, things like autism studies and depression news. While the Neuroscience thread has more discussions open and actually seems to be an official sort of thread, specific to "Neuroscience News", there is more of a small community feel and specific directed questions to discuss, not just articles.

ZEISS Microscopy. "Cultured Rat Hippocampal Neuron"
01/13/2016 via Flickr.Attribution 2.0 Generic

Read It and Was Fascinated
      From the Cognitive Science thread the thing that interested me most, while it may not be especially about cognitive science, was an article about what parents with successful children seem to have in common. While the article itself is not of the best quality, and in fact is dubious, the thread of comments produced on Reddit is more interesting. The commenters seem most concerned with debunking the source or making fun of what the article has delineated.
     The Neuroscience thread was much smaller in scope and had more single questions with answers instead of articles that were commented on and I found these to be more interesting. Like the thread on the study of consciousness, that only had a couple answers to it but were well worded and did present intriguing ideas for the original poster of the thread to consider. I found it interesting because consciousness is a more fascinating subject than most in my opinion.

Impressionists:
     While the people in the forum of Reddit were not talking the way I expected the people of my field to speak in, it was how I expected to find Reddit. Within the more specific neuroscience page it seemed more of the culture I have come to expect from within my field of study, not as general or open to public; only those with a very specific interest would visit these threads.

Evaluation of News Magazine Stories

     Magazines are always a good sources of news, with shorter and easier to read articles that can still efficiently get information across. Now that magazines have moved online, like most sources of reading, they are even more accessible for information. Of the top news magazines I chose WIRED  and The New Yorker to analyze and evaluate for stories. Ultimately I decided to choose a story about the regulation of genetic testing and another story about Republican backed clean energy, it may not specifically adress my field of research it is science related.

ajcann.wordpress.com, AJC. "Telomeres"08/04/2013 via Flickr.
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The Discourse(tm) 
     Genetic Testing- Within this story the conflict is about genetic testing; specifically the work done by 23andMe which gives a user ancestral data and personal genetic traits and health problems information. The FDA is trying to regulate the company because the FDA thinks that the organization is not up to code on health code, incumbents that are having patients/customers taken from them dislike it. and also that because of its potential for diagnosing disease it has to be pre-approved by the FDA.
     Clean Energy- The debate within this story is not so much in this story as it is in the background as a continuing debate that through the future connected to this story may have a happy resolution. It has been common that those on the conservative side of politics also looked conservatively at energy; sticking to fossil fuels and detesting the renewable or cleaner sources of energy possible. This summit promoting that conservatives also begin to turn to clean energy and saving our environment is controversial because it is a move away from what it has been in the past.

Have Some Sympathy
     Genetic Testing-The most sympathetic character within this story is the 23andMe organization; the product and its venture do not fall into the perfect FDA regulations because it's new and the FDA has not predicted how the modern age of science could change the public sector for things even like genetic testing. I feel sympathy for 23andMe because they are providing a service to those who wouldn't and are being punished in a way for being innovative and providing something the people want.
     Clean Energy- I would not call what this stories characters invoke sympathy in the sense of pity but the characters I can most relate to or agree with within the story would be the younger conservatives who actually helped put the summit together. I feel sympathy for them in trying to change the views of those that are on the conservative side so that the world may be changed to be a better place.

giovzaid85. "The WIndmills of the Gods" 03/01/2013 via Flickr.
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Got No Sympathy 
      Genetic Testing- For me the people within this specific story I'm most unsympathetic towards are the incumbents, doctors and industry regulators, that did not plan or expect this product of genetic testing to appear in the field for people to take advantage of and are now panicking to have it removed or at least regulated heavily to give them time to adjust. The incumbents seem too set in their old ideas and ways and unprepared for change for me to have sympathy for their "plight".
     Clean Energy- Those that do not receive my sympathy or that I cannot sympathize for are those that still ignore or push back changes for clean energy. They are the ones still not allowing for bills to pass through Congress that would put us on a track to ensuring the protection of the environment and instead push towards greater disaster.