Find a news article related to recent developments in some type of science, such as medicine, social science, physics, or something else. You can find it in a newspaper, magazine, or on the Internet, but if you use the Internet, the source must be a real media company (nytimes.com, msnbc.com, foxnews.com, nejm.org, etc).

Your task is to critique the article. You might have to look through several articles to pick out one with interesting mistakes or problems. You should question the source, methods, results, and conclusion.

1) Question the source. If the article is about a recent study or experiment, then who did the study? Are they impartial or biased? Who paid for the study? If it was a study of a product paid for by the manufacturer, the results might be overly rosy. If it was a nonprofit group or foundation, what are their political leanings or prejudices?

2) Question the methods. If the article tells you about how the study was conducted, decide whether or not it was done well. Does the author describe how the sample was selected? If it was a survey, how were the questions phrased? If the article doesn't tell you these things, that's a weakness so you should point that out.

3) Question the results. What was the sample size? Was it large enough? Does the article talk about margin of error? Is it possible that the apparently interesting results could be a coincidence?

4) Question the conclusion. What did the scientists or researchers really find, and what are the headlines saying? Remember correlation is not causationjust because two things tend to happen at the same time does not mean that one causes another.