User:AAR3643/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Epigenetic effects of smoking

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This article was chosen due to its applicability to my current course of study, Epigenetics and Neuroscience. This article matters, seeing as smoking causes many negative and harmful effects to the body, including to the expression of DNA in an epigenetic fashion. My first impression of this article was that the lead section appeared too brief, while the organization of the article appeared to be rather jumbled and not well-organized, at least from a visual standpoint.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section - The lead section is rather short in general and while concise, does not encapsulate the overall topic of the article or give an outline as to how the article will be structured or discussed. In addition, the lead section discusses similarities in epigenetic changes in children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy, however is not discussed further in the body of the article Epigenetic effects of smoking.

Content - While the article's content is generally relevant to the epigenetic effects of smoking, the article mentions the health impacts of smoking without directly linking said health impacts to epigenetic effects, the main idea of the article. While this article seems to be up-to-date based on the sources that are cited, the talk page of the article cites a C rating for the article, and implies that the article possesses many gaps in content necessary to produce a full picture of the topic at hand. As such, this article is more than likely missing important details.

Tone and Balance - It appears from first glance that the section entitled 'Consequences of altered DNA methylation' is overrepresented and dominates the article as compared to the effects of histone modification and effects on miRNA, which the lead section had appeared to imply were all of equal importance. Overall, the article appears to have a mostly neutral tone, however it could be implied that the article itself could be coming from a negative point of view due to the nature of smoking. The article mentions language such as "disastrous" to describe the effects of smoking, implying that there could be potential underlying feelings regarding smoking on the part of the author(s). Some of the minor topics within the article and minor details are given high priority, even though they do not appear to be encapsulating the entire scope of their section or argument.

Sources and References - While the majority of the arguments in the article appear to be supported, at least in part, by relevant research, the most up-to-date sources are from 2012, meaning that the most recent information included in this article is from a decade ago, implying that the information could potentially be outdated depending on more recent research that has been conducted. In addition, at least two of the six cited articles have recurring authors, potentially implying that the breadth of researches may be too narrow and not diverse enough in scope to be reliable. It appears that all six of the cited sources are peer-reviewed and from NCBI, meaning that the articles themselves may be reliable in what they address. The links within the article also appear to work well, so no issues in this specific area.

Organization and Writing Quality - The article is rather disorganized in terms of ordering of topics and their organization into an article that would otherwise be easy to follow had it not been all jumbled together. There appears to be little continuation from one topic to another, and without a reasonable background of knowledge within the subject, it would be difficult for a reader to understand the article altogether as it mentions specifics without expanding upon overarching ideas. The article does possess at least one grammatical error, most notably in the lead section where it states "... linked to many of negative health effects.." when there should be a 'the' in between the words 'of' and 'negative.'

Images and Media - The article itself includes no images whatsoever other than those linked to words citing other Wikipedia articles.

Talk Page Discussion - No conversations are present under this article's talk page, and it appears that the last edit for this article was in 2018, nearly four years ago, implying that the information could use updating. The article itself was rated a C-class article, implying that while it is substantial, it still lacks important content and/or contains too much irrelevant content, which I had agreed with based on my previous evaluation sections of this article. The article was also rated as low-importance on the WikiProjects Genetics Project page.

Overall Impressions - While this article does appear to cite sources correctly and mostly includes relevant information, it lacks good organization and includes some data that is irrelevant to the overall scope of the article itself. The article also might need to be updated, seeing as the information cited is from, at minimum, a decade ago, meaning that new research supporting or refuting the current information could potentially be added to strengthen the article. The article does a good job of discussing its topics well and in good detail, even if the information does not necessarily follow a good organizational structure. While I do not believe this article to be poorly developed, I would lean towards the article being underdeveloped and in need of potential revision to be better suited as a more reliable source of information regarding the epigenetic effects of smoking.