This web page was produced as an assignment for Genetics 677, an undergraduate course at UW-Madison.
Popular Press v. Scientific Article
Popular science articles can often grossly misrepresent the conclusions made in the primary literature, especially when they could suggest a possible medical cure or treatment that is new to the public. Science Daily's popular press article about the primary literature piece published in the Journal of Molecular Psychiatry did no such misrepresentation. It did an excellent job of explaining the importance and rationale behind the experiment, without jumping to conclusions or overstating the authors' results. Although the primary literature contained a great deal of data, the popular press article did an excellent job of concisely explaining the gist of what was done, and well as explaining the importance of the mouse model system for studying bipolar disease in humans.
A great deal of data was left out, however, that would have been nice to have been noted in the popular press article, but I doubt that there was enough space. A discussion of the difference found between short-term lithium treatment and long-term lithium treatment was completely missing, as was a discussion of control comparisons not just with WT mice, but also with GluR5 mice.
Ashley Bateman, [email protected], last updated 5/13/09
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