It was the end of the fall semester and our biology teacher had assigned a research project/presentation on the topics of genetic illnesses. Sounded easy enough but there was a catch. We had to use primary sources as our main form of information. This was difficult because many of the crucial facts that were needed in the research project were located deep inside 30 page long science papers.
To begin the research for my presentation I started with the classical search engine: Google. This brought up millions of articles and papers on progeria: my chosen topic. I clicked the first link which took me to a review article-- a perfect place to start. That article was located on omim.org. “An Online Catalog of Human Genes and Genetic Disorders” as stated on their website. Their citations led me to many primary source journal articles and papers that went in depth on the subject of progeria.
Having so many articles on one topic enabled my scope of knowledge to be widened. In addition it helped me understand a difficult concept. Having many different voices explain a single idea enabled me look at it from different perspectives. Looking through primary sources is definitely difficult but worthy. It lets people look at the facts as is before they are construed by secondary sources.
No comments:
Post a Comment