Talk:Larry Swanson

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2020 and 1 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AMMarquette, MUemily999, Dijanazen, Madisynhengels.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:56, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Secondary Review of article: imagines and information
Hey Group, My first comment is that your page looks very plain. I think adding some picture, possibly of Larry Swanson him self or schematics of the anatomical layout of the CNS/PNS would help nonscientific visual learners very much in understanding the topics you are discussing in his research. Speaking of research, the sections seems somewhat under developed. Were there problems finding reviews about his important scientific contributions or id his archive of publications just limited? I think that section is important to develop to help understand why he was chosen to be an SFN president a received many awards. Right now the research section is somewhat unclear even for me, a student in the class. MUBISC-AR (talk) 17:50, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Larry Sawson
Hi! I agree that more pictures should be added to make your page look more lively. I found this neuroscience tree that you could add to your page for him, https://neurotree.org/beta/tree.php?pid=2278. 8421nguyena (talk) 17:39, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Secondary Review
Your article was well-done. I appreciated the comprehensive summary of his honors and awards. However, I think that you can move the "Early Life" section to the lead paragraph, since both facts you put in there are either previously stated in the lead or would not be detrimental to it. I also think that the article would benefit from a more detailed explanation of his research, since that is the primary reason why people would be looking up this person on Wikipedia. The research section could be longer, and I think the honors and awards section can be shorter. In addition, I think the last section should say "Publications." Otherwise, I thought your article gave a pretty good look into his life. EllieM0703 (talk) 20:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Secondary Review
I really like how you guys incorporated a wide variety of topics for him. I think you had a good short synopsis of him at the beginning, and did a good job breaking up the categories as well as laying them out. I do agree with the others that a couple more pictures would be helpful, but I get that sometimes finding photos can be tricky when dealing with such specific topics. One thing I would recommend would be to hyperlink more of the words in the article so that if someone doesn't know what neural plasticity means, they can click on the words and be redirected to another page where they can learn about it before going on and finishing your article. I think another good addition were to be if you could include some "additional readings" of works and readings that were published by him so if people want, they can read more into what he has contributed. Overall I really liked your page! It's very nicely laid out. Alyne123 (talk) 20:37, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Secondary Review
Hello, group. It's obvious you've put quite a bit of work into this page! I agree with a lot of the comments before. One place that really excels in this article is the description of Honors and Awards and of the two books he’s published. I agree with @MUBISC-AR, the place that needs improvement is the research section. The paragraphs feel a bit disorganized and repetitive. One place you could really expand on and organize is the description of the development of the rat connectome. Perhaps you could find an image from his research and include it? Though I am not sure about the citation requirements on that. One thing my group found helpful was to look through and organize our neuroscientist’s “most cited” publications in chronological order, which gave us a picture of her contributions overall. One place you could look is at the info about him being awarded the Institute of Scientific Information Award, since this seems to be directly linked to his research contributions. You could also look into the grants you've described and see what work he did with them. These might give you a better idea of how to organize this research section. I also agree more hyperlinks would help the layperson understand the content. Finally, the majority of your article lacks citations. Putting these in will probably help clarify your ideas and make the article feel more polished. Cschmitz253 (talk) 04:19, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

= Primary Review ==

Hello! This is one of the best articles I have read through because of the good range of information you give and the good neurological research you also portray. That being said, I feel there are a couple things that could still be improved.

Opening paragraph - No comments here, I think you did a good job starting with his life overview and highlighting his best known research.

Well written - I find that you wrote this very clearly and very factually, which is what a good article should do. My only comment would be to stick to present tense most often, ie "An additional publication by Larry Swanson IS the book," since this is a fact.

Verifiable with no original research - It seems I am not the first one to comment this, but there is a lack of citation in the Research section. Perhaps try to find more book reviews or article overviews to find information about his research that you can site. Without this, it appears that this is original research on Swanson that you are concluding from him.

Broad in coverage - I assume that you planned to cover personal life, research contributions, and honors and awards. I think you did a great job balancing personal and professional life, but I think the honors/awards section could be narrowed. I feel most readers wouldn't get too much out of reading this lengthy section. Instead, I would move some of that same information into the research section, since a lot of it is about grants that further his research.

Neutral - I think you did a good job being factual and neutral, except when you say "While being a well-known and highly achieving neurobiologist." I would either cut that or change it to something more professional like "While being an active researcher."

Illustrated - You have done a good job listening to previous comments and adding the outline of the nervous system, but I would add it later since it is more useful when you said he is the one who made that heirarchy, not right away before a reader knows that. I understand not every article can include his personal photo.

References: So I looked into the first article, and unfortunately this is a personal website written by him, making it a primary source. Although written in 3rd person, we cannot trust this source to be neutral. I would suggest finding information about his research elsewhere, but using this website somewhere as a external link instead of a citation.

This is a great article; I feel like I learned something new about the history of neuroscience by reading it. Abbey-MU (talk) 17:06, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Author Response
Hi! I changed a few of the suggestions that you provided. First, I removed the "while being a well-known and highly achieving neurobiologist" part since this is a biased and not neutral statement. I also focused on changing the tenses throughout the publications section, since it went back and forth between present tense and past tense. This was done by mainly using the present tense since the publications are still read and used throughout the area of neuroscience. I also condensed the awards and honors into a table, therefore removing all the extra information that was included originally. --AMMarquette (talk) 03:16, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Secondary Review
Hello Authors! Overall, I can see that a lot of time and energy was put into researching for this article. It contains a lot of relevant information concerning Dr. Swanson and his contributions to neuroscience. The main suggestion I want to make is concerning the Research portion. When the discussion the mammalian rat brain and the research conducted using that came about, it was discussed in a lot of depth, which I think is great. I feel as though the paragraphs before that could be explained even further. I feel as though the ideas presented are a bit vague and it’s a bit glazed over. Possibly diving deeper into what “his studies focus around the brain and how it interacts with many different aspects of life” fully means and entails would be helpful for the reader.

Overall, it’s a very well written piece. -Akunna Korieh

Secondary Review
I think that the research could be explained with a bit more detail. I also think that there could either be more added to the "Early Life" section, or it could be combined into the initial paragraph, as another reviewer suggested. Very nice overall though!Cdol97 (talk) 20:06, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Primary Review
Lead paragraph – I think your lead paragraph looks great. You did a nice job highlighting the main important aspects of your person. There is not too much information or too little, it looks just fine.

Well written – Overall, I think the article is well written and is easy to follow. You did a nice job breaking down and organizing every section. The article as a whole is easy to understand with only a few spelling/grammar errors that I’m sure you will be able to find as you keep revising the article.

Verifiable with no original research – As a few others have mentioned already, adding more citations would help make your article stronger. Adding more secondary sources will help back up your information and even help you elaborate more on what you already have. It’s always better to have more sources so if you are able to find more to back up your research section that would be great. As reference there are a few primary sources that can't be trusted, so try finding more secondary sources.

Broad in coverage – When looking at the early life section, I feel like either you could add a few more main points to this section or just combine it with the lead paragraph since there is a bit of repetition between the two. As for the other sections I feel like they look great they are not too long or too short. I like how your publication section is in paragraph form where you describe more about each publication rather than just giving a list.

Neutral – I believe you did a really nice job staying neutral and factual throughout the whole article. Throughout the article you do a nice job just stating what he has done and focusing on his research and life.

Illustrated – I really like the image you included about the nervous system, but I would suggest adding it maybe in the research section of the article since you do talk more about it there. You could add a personal photo of him at the top, but I do know it is hard to find them due to copyrights. Other images I would suggest could be of the university he went to or adding an image relating to the mammalian bodily functions that you mention.

References: I viewed the second article that is included in the reference and it appears to be his own personal website. Since it is his own website and he is the one adding to it, this would not be considered a secondary source so I would suggest looking for another article to reference. In order to completely trust the source, we need to use secondary sources only. This article could be used as a hyperlink, but not as a reference.

Aside from the suggestions made above, overall the article seems well organized and give a lot of good information on Larry Swanson and what he has done over the years. --MULuna (talk) 20:40, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Author Review
Hi @MULuna thank you for your responses on our page! After going through your review as a group we thought it was important to get more secondary sources and cite them throughout our article. We found another research article and two Neuro Tree cites that could help to elaborate some of his background and research. Also, after reading your review and other's reviews we did eliminate the primary references and included them in the article as an external link for others to go navigate those pages. On the other hand, I took the nervous system photo and did move it into the research section because it did make more sense there than in the early life section. Many people like you suggested that we include another photo possibly of him, but since we could not get one of him we included one of USC, where he has done most of his work. Lastly, I fixed some small grammatical errors that was mentioned in your review. Thank you for your advice and help! --AMMarquette (talk) 21:53, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Primary Review
I think the article was very easy to follow despite the complexity of the subject, the wording helps any reader to understand what the article is about even if they don’t have a scientific background. Some comments that I have for the article:

Well written – I found no grammatical errors

Verifiable with no original content – Try adding more citations, especially in the second paragraph when you talk about the rats in the Swanson’s study. Without these citations it looks as if it was original content in which you are reaching conclusions about his work with no evidence to support such claims.

Broad in coverage – I think you can add more information about his early life. It doesn’t have to be a lot but if you only include his undergrad and PhD, it makes me feel that I didn’t learn much about him. For the awards section, I think you can delete the grant and add that information to the research section.

Neutral – You did a good job in keeping the neutrality on the article. I found the article to be very professional and stating facts with no opinions.

Illustrated – I liked the picture that you added but I think it is better if you move it when you start talking about the research section so that way it is easier for the reader to understand the CNS and PNS while reading about his experiments. You can try adding a picture of him or a picture of where he studied at the top.

References – I looked up the fourth reference and it looks that Swanson was one of the authors of the book, which means it is a primary source. Since it is a primary source it cannot be trusted since it could be biased and it could also break the neutrality of the article. I think it is a great reference so I would suggest a third party review about the article and use that review as a reference instead.

Other than that I believe it is a great article. Zitro2605 (talk) 22:56, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Authors Response
Hi, thank you for taking the time to read through our article! We appreciate all feedback! I agree with you that there needs to be more information on his early life. There wasn't too much we could find however, I did add some of his interests. I think learning about the researcher's early life gives a great insight into who he/she is and helps readers get a bigger picture. We have also made sure to look into our 4th reference and find a secondary source to cover for it. I agree that it can't be trusted as it can be biased. Thank you for pointing that out. Overall, thank you for the suggestions and for helping us improve our page about Larry Swanson. -Dijana Z

Secondary Review
Hi all! You have a good start to your page. As I did with my other secondary review, I am going to focus on your sentence syntax and grammar. The intro and Early Life sections look good to me. In the research section, the first sentence is a bit awkward and hard to understand, and the second sentence does not actually contain an independent clause. I would read through this entire section again out loud and make edits to improve the flow and cohesiveness. In the Awards and Honors section, I would change the first sentence to "Larry Swanson has received many awards..." to change the tense of the verb. In the Publications section, there are a number of unnecessary commas that should be removed, such as after "with" and "published". I would again try to read this section out loud and look for awkward wording and syntax. One other suggestion that I have which has been mentioned already is to add more hyperlinks. There are terms throughout the article which would be unfamiliar to most people such as plasticity and neurotransmitters. Good luck with your edits! --TristanAB (talk) 00:17, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Primary Review
Hello! I think this is a really good page that gives a lot of good information. Opening - Did a good job going over his life and what his best studies/research are. well written- It was very clear and to the point which is really good. Like in previous comments though, focus on present tense. verifiable - like it was stated in other comments, try to find book or article reviews for his research to make sure it is not just a summary. I did like however the amount of detail that was put into the research section. broad - Did a great job in talking about both the research and his personal life. I liked that you really focused on each part equally instead of one over the other. neutral - Was very factual throughout the entire page. Illustrated - I would maybe try to add a picture of him or a picture in general. I did like that you added a table of the awards though. Reference - I looked at the 5th reference, it is an overview of a book that he had written so I think that is very good. Overall, the page is well organized and has great overall information about him.

Author Response
Hi! Thanks for the feedback. We were able to add some more pictures in appropriate spots. Additionally we were able to add a few more references in a few spots including his awards section. His research section was also updated to include some specific article reviews. Thanks for the comments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MUemily999 (talk • contribs) 00:33, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

=Fix reference= Reference number 2 links to Marquette University library not the article so it is useless for anyone outside the University. MMBiology (talk) 21:40, 6 May 2020 (UTC)