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Article Evaluation

I chose to look at articles that were about different types of epidemiological cohort studies that were conducted in the latter half of the 1900s. I started by reading the article on the Framingham Heart Study--from there, I also looked at three other studies that were hyperlinked in the "Similar Studies" of the article. All four articles were very good about not being biased--they each took the time to show the reader the history of the study and then ultimately showcase the implications of the studies. One thing from the Framingham Heart Study article that caught me off guard was that the major findings were organized only by time period than by actual finding. In the five time decades (1960s - 2000s) that were displayed in the form of a disorganized list, blood pressure and hypertension span across more than one decade's worth of significant findings. This differs from the way we talked about in class--in class, we focused on both the time periods and the actual findings as themes by which we were able to discuss more efficiently the major findings. Interestingly, the other articles, including one about the Nurses' Health Study, divided the results of the studies by four overarching categories, including smoking, oral contraceptives, alcohol, and diet. Within each of these categories, each categories' impact on diseases like Breast Cancer or Coronary Heart Disease were discussed. In fact, even the way it is visually presented to the reader is much more appealing than the list shown in the Framingham Heart Study article (it is shown as a table). Ultimately, the implications of the studies should be the main takeaway for the reader--this thus means that the presentations of these findings is vital when designing the article. Another problem I saw with the articles in general was that some studies that were referred to, though they had their own articles, oftentimes were incomplete or really just had little information. I think it is the responsibility of the author who wants to hyperlink to another article to also contribute to that other article too. The citations for the articles work perfectly fine.