This website was created as a project for Genetics 677, an undergraduate course at UW Madison.
Popular Press Article Review
The following is a review of the popular press article published by ScienceDaily. A link to the original article can be found at the bottom of the page.
Extremely recent research has identified vitamin C as a possible treatment for accelerated aging diseases. The article published by ScienceDaily January 4, 2010 presents a new study linking vitamin C to a mouse model of Werner syndrome (WS). I thought the article does well to outline and highlight the major findings of the study, as well as the basic symptoms of WS. This is important, as most public science articles get straight to the point and focus on what they believe to be the most prevalent information.
However, they meagerly supported the findings of the study without clearly describing the significance of the research. Although the authors of the paper admit they do not know the mechanism by which vitamin C alters gene expression, the summary by ScienceDaily fails to explain that more research on this topic is necessary to fully understand the results of the experiments. The popular press article mentions that prior to treatment, mice with a mutated WRN gene were “fat, diabetic, and developing heart disease and cancer,” yet they do not provide any specific biochemical or genetic qualities of the rescued mutant mice that could provide a greater contextual background for the reader.
Additionally, the methods that were used to gather the data remain a mystery to the reader. And although some of the techniques are lengthy and complex, even a minor attempt to explain how the research was conducted could again provide the reader with a more comprehensive understanding of the material. Yet to their credit, ScienceDaily did include a brief statement about how the vitamin C treatment had no effect on the wild-type control group. This is crucial to the study as it showed that the vitamin C treatment is unique to the WRN mutants, and therapeutically significant. A problem with the tone of the article is that it may be optimistically misleading. Although the mouse is in some aspects a fantastic mammalian model organism, WRN mutant mice differ from human patients with WS in terms of the WRN protein that is produced. This may affect the success of using vitamin C as a treatment for human patients with WS, yet ScienceDaily fails to mention this important distinction.
Lastly, the popular press article could have done a better job to explain the current deficiency of WS treatments available. There is no cure for the disorder, and symptoms are treated on an as needed basis. This condition of the disease is important to know in order to grasp the potential significance of the study’s findings.
However, they meagerly supported the findings of the study without clearly describing the significance of the research. Although the authors of the paper admit they do not know the mechanism by which vitamin C alters gene expression, the summary by ScienceDaily fails to explain that more research on this topic is necessary to fully understand the results of the experiments. The popular press article mentions that prior to treatment, mice with a mutated WRN gene were “fat, diabetic, and developing heart disease and cancer,” yet they do not provide any specific biochemical or genetic qualities of the rescued mutant mice that could provide a greater contextual background for the reader.
Additionally, the methods that were used to gather the data remain a mystery to the reader. And although some of the techniques are lengthy and complex, even a minor attempt to explain how the research was conducted could again provide the reader with a more comprehensive understanding of the material. Yet to their credit, ScienceDaily did include a brief statement about how the vitamin C treatment had no effect on the wild-type control group. This is crucial to the study as it showed that the vitamin C treatment is unique to the WRN mutants, and therapeutically significant. A problem with the tone of the article is that it may be optimistically misleading. Although the mouse is in some aspects a fantastic mammalian model organism, WRN mutant mice differ from human patients with WS in terms of the WRN protein that is produced. This may affect the success of using vitamin C as a treatment for human patients with WS, yet ScienceDaily fails to mention this important distinction.
Lastly, the popular press article could have done a better job to explain the current deficiency of WS treatments available. There is no cure for the disorder, and symptoms are treated on an as needed basis. This condition of the disease is important to know in order to grasp the potential significance of the study’s findings.
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