User:Elinf5/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Pain in animals

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I choose this article to evaluate because it is an important subject that determines how an animal is treated in our society. Many times the evaluation of ethics for non humans is actually based on similarities that they share with humans. This includes sentiency, moral agency, and even whether or not the animal feels pain.

Evaluate the article
Content: The lead section for this article can be edited to include a better introduction. This is specifically for the opening sentence. The reader should be able to identify the contents of the article by reading the first sentence. In this case, the first sentence is "Pain negatively affects the health and welfare of animals." Although there are citations for this statement, I believe this sentence can be edited because the contents of the article is mostly focused on presenting scientific information that proves whether or not an animal feels pain. It is not focused on how pain negatively affects the welfare of animals. In fact, the article does not really delve into why pain for animals is problematic in our society much at all. A better leading sentence would be: Discussions on whether or not levels of pain is felt in animals is a complex topic.

Tone and Balance: The article could be edited to be more neutral in presenting evidence that says animals don't feel pain. The majority of the article is biased towards the argument that animals do feel pain. In the past, society believes and has deemed through scientific misconceptions or rumors that many species do not have the biological ability to feel pain. There is not enough information on where this information was ever true or where it came from. Including this would help disprove or strengthen the authors claims and contribute to an overall neutrality of the writing.

The article could also introduce more of the scientific names for the subphylum of invertebrate and vertebrae.

Sources:For the most part, this article has workable links to sources that back up their scientific claims. There is one source that has no link whatsoever. This is for: ''"Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, ILAR, National Research Council, 1996 copyright, p. 64." ''

There are also a couple areas of writing that could have citations and do not. An example of this is:

"Again in humans, this is when the withdrawn finger begins to hurt, moments after the withdrawal. Pain is therefore a private, emotional experience. Pain cannot be directly measured in other animals, including other humans; responses to putatively painful stimuli can be measured, but not the experience itself. To address this problem when assessing the capacity of other species to experience pain, argument-by-analogy is used. This is based on the principle that if an animal responds to a stimulus in a similar way to ourselves, it is likely to have had an analogous experience." This is an entire paragraph that has no citations and relies mostly on information that is could be considered plagiarized if there is no citation following it.

There is another paragraph under "Awareness of pain" that has no citation whatsoever.

"Nerve impulses from nociceptors may reach the brain, where information about the stimulus (e.g. quality, location, and intensity), and affect (unpleasantness) are registered. Though the brain activity involved has been studied, the brain processes underlying conscious awareness are not well known." This needs to be deleted from the article altogether because a citation for this information is not presented.

Overall, this is a credible article that keeps its neutrality in most places. There are several places as mentioned that could potentially be biased so it should be edited accordingly. I don't believe there is enough imagery on the page either. There are only 2 pictures and they don't really associate well with pain in animals. I believe there are probably much more images available to the public that undoubtedly depicts animals in pain. This would strengthen the tone of the article. It is a well developed article that just needs some minor tweaking.