Short answers
| Question # 49454 | Psychology | 7 months ago |
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| $20 |
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Scientists disagree a lot. Particularly at the cutting edge where new techniques are developed leading to new ways of gaining knowledge. The question of whether neurogenesis occurs in adult humans is one of those areas. New research techniques are developed and these need to be scrutinised carefully so we can be confident the results are being interpreted correctly. The scrutiny generates scientific disagreement.
In this activity we’re going to look at one way these kinds of disagreement are used productively to push the field forward.
Activity 1
Find the paper “Evidences for Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Humans” by Elena P. Moreno-Jiménez, Julia Terreros-Roncal, Miguel Flor-García, Alberto Rábano, María Llorens-Martín in Journal of Neuroscience 24 March 2021, 41 (12) 2541-2553; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0675-20.2020
It’s one of a pair of Dual Perspectives articles. As the name suggests, each paper has a different perspective. Find the partner article and list the reference for that article
Activity 2
The two articles above are review articles. Review articles review the primary research studies of a certain topic (e.g., looking at adult neurogenesis in humans) and explain how they came to their conclusion about whether the results of research in the area unambiguously allow us to conclude that we have evidence for adult neurogenesis in humans.
Each set of Review authors can then read the other’s article and write a reply that is also published with their original article.
It’s clear from the title which side of the debate each article is supporting. What they are really disagreeing about though is not the existence of adult neurogenesis in humans but whether there is good evidence for it.
Discuss the articles, then do your best to write a lay summary of their disagreement. A lay summary means a summary for the general public - think science journalism. Something non-scientists would understand. (No jargon!)
Here are three hints for this activity;
- It revolves around whether the results of techniques used for this research are being interpreted correctly.
- The section where the authors reply to each other’s review is a useful place to get an overview of what they disagree about most.
- You could complete this activity without spending the time to fully understand the articles. They’re very technical and could take you some time, which is not the aim of this.
Activity 3
The Journal of Neuroscience provides another way to discuss the contents of (or in other words, to register disagreement with) the articles they publish. It’s a somewhat new feature and hasn’t been used for either of these articles. Can you find this feature on the Journal of Neuroscience site for each of these papers? What is the name of this feature?
