Scientific Claim: The Claim

Do a rough draft of this before coming to lab. We will use it to work with lab. 

You will need to complete each part of the assignment by filling in the Google Document Template Links to an external site. By the end of the semester, you will have finished the project and filled in the entire document.   You will be graded on each segment of the project. 

Today's assignment will be to complete the Scientific Claim.  To do this you need to fill in these parts of the document

Claim: 

• (State the claim you are assessing. This should be in the form of a hypothesis or statement rather than a question. For example: hydroxychloroquine lowers mortality in COVID-19 patients, instead of ‘’Does hydroxychloroquine lower mortality in COVID-19 patients) 

Reference: 

• (This should be the reference to where you first saw the claim. Examples: newspaper, website, TV, magazine, social media etc.  You will need to use the appropriate citation format. In order to do that use NoodleBib. I personally just enter my source into NoodleBib and use the format they give me. I don’t remember the format for all the different electronic sources!)

Prediction: 

• • (It might not be explicit, but the authors of the claim will have a prediction of what should happen if they are correct.  ‘’If my claim  is correct, then XYZ should happen, or have happened’’.  For example, if hydroxychloroquine treats COVID-19, than patients receiving the drug will have lower risk of mortality’’) 

Help Finding a Claim

Newspapers: 

• Search the the SRJC databases for News Sources : search for a particular topic (‘climate change’, ‘COVID’, extraterrestrials, etc) 
• Go to a newspaper website and search either for their science section. 
• Los Angeles Times Links to an external site.
• Washington Post Links to an external site.
• New York Times Links to an external site. or via the SRJC Proquest Subscription  Links to an external site.
• Christian Science Monito Links to an external site.r  Links to an external site.

Good Websites

• Vox.com: Links to an external site.and search for a science topic you are interested in
• Science Daily Links to an external site.
• NPR- Links to an external site. search for science 
• Climate related : 4th National Climate Assessment Links to an external site.
  • • • • IPCC Links to an external site.

Science Review Article

• There are several magazines that are aimed at knowledgeable amateurs such as ourselves.  Examples include:
• Scientific American
• Bioscience
• National Geographic
• Popular Science
• The Smithsonian. 

Use this short video to gain access through the SRJC Library