Written Assignment
Students will prepare a written critique of a scientific article that relates to the course and is not included in the weekly discussions. The article selected for analysis should be approved by the instructor at least one week in advance of the deadline. The critique should briefly describe the background and context for the work and the central hypothesis of the research, and then focus on the key results and controls and the conclusions drawn from the experiments. The paper should conclude with a comparison between the selected article and one of the articles we have read for the course, weighing the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. The paper should be more concerned with key experiments and controls rather than describing every figure/table panel. It should be no more than 1000 words and turned in on week 8.
Oral Assignment
Oral presentations will take place during our final session on week 13. Students will prepare a short journal club presentation (~12 minutes, with 3 minutes for further questions/discussion) based on a research article that is different from the written assignment and not included in the weekly discussions. Papers must be approved by the instructor at least 2 weeks in advance, by week 11. The presentation should consist of about ten slides and include the following: a title slide, one or two background slides, a slide that presents the hypothesis/goal of the paper, three to five slides that present and critique the key experiments and controls, and one slide that summarizes and critiques the major take-home message and proposes one to two key future experiments.
