The Value of Scientific Peer-Reviewed Literature in a General Education Science Course

Abstract

HE peer-reviewed scientific literature is central to the deliberative structure of science. It has been described as ‘‘the major factor in keeping the scientific enterprise relatively honest’’(Abelson 1980). A real understanding of the scientific literature is essential to grasping how science works and how it differs from other human endeavors. While undergraduate science majors often become familiar with the structure and function of the scientific literature, general education science courses aimed at nonscience majors rarely, if ever, require their students to become familiar with this central literature. Because of this, such students and citizens remain unaware of the most important deliberative structure of science. I describe below a general education human genetics course that I offered at Washington State University’s Vancouver branch campus. This course required students to write a term paper comparing an article in the peer-reviewed scientific literature with a popular article on the same subject. By doing this, each student became focused on one or a few papers in the scientific literature that were presumably chosen by the student because of substantial interest in the subject area. By comparing the structure, readability, documentation and other features of the chosen scientific article with one or more popular articles, the most important features of the scientific literature were highlighted.