User:Slaughter3/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Neuroscientist - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate the Wikipedia article on Neuroscientists due to my own interest in this field. Neuroscience is an important topic to study because it deals with how the brain works. As I read the article, I found it very interesting and felt that it was well-organized and explained things at a level that most people could understand, while still going more in-depth on some aspects.

Evaluate the article
I thought that the article on Neuroscientists was well-written and interesting overall, but had a few key comments.

Lead section


 * Clearly and concisely describes the topic; begins with the definition of "neuroscientist" and continues with the various roles a neuroscientist plays.
 * Includes a brief description of the major sections but does not touch on history or famous neuroscientists. I don't believe that these major sections on the article need to be touched on heavily in the introduction, but they should at least be mentioned (for example, referencing how the field has advanced from the Egyptian understanding to what it is now, or mentioning a famous neuroscientist like Charles Sherrington and Edgar Adrian).
 * Includes information about types of neurological research (such as basic research and applied research) but this information is not present later in the article. This information about the types of research should either be deleted from the introduction or added later in the article - my recommendation would be to further elaborate on the research in the job overview section.
 * Lead is concise and not overly detailed.

Content


 * Content is relevant and up-to-date. The "Current and developing research topics" section does a good job of referencing studies that are currently happening in the field of neuroscience.
 * My main issue with this article is that is does not address the equity gap. It does not mention underrepresented populations and their experience in the field of neuroscience - specifically minorities working as neuroscientists. I think that this could be remedied by including a statistic of the percentage of women or Black people that work as neuroscientists as of 2022. This statistic could be added to the "Job overview - Work environment" subsection with the other statistics of what neuroscientists go on to do after doctoral programs.
 * Another way that this article could improve its representation of underrepresented populations is by adding how different minority groups have experienced working as neuroscientists - such as being left out of research or having their research ignored as a result of their skin color/gender/sexuality/etc. This could be added in the "History" section of the article.

Tone


 * The article does not intend to persuade readers into a certain viewpoint. It does a good job of staying neutral.
 * The article does not use minority or fringe viewpoints. This could be remedied by adding a quote from a minority neuroscientist in the history section, along with the history section addition I suggested above.

Sources


 * The article does a good job overall of using various neutral sources.
 * I believe that the sources could be updated. Many of the sources are from 2015-2016, and while many things have remained the same in the topic of neuroscience, other things may have changed over the years, such as job opportunities and tasks.
 * Many of the sources used are academic and/or peer-reviewed, such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and www.psychology.ucsd.edu.
 * The links still work, despite their age.

Organization


 * The article is well-written and organized in an easy-to-read manner. The article explains the major sections relating to the job of a neuroscientist: the job overview, history of the career, current topics of research in the field, and famous neuroscientists.
 * I did not notice any spelling or grammatical errors throughout the article.

Images


 * The article includes multiple images which help the reader to further understand the topic. They are visually appealing in the article.
 * The images are captioned well and stick to Wikipedia's copyright regulations.

Talk page


 * Wikipedia rates this article as a C-class, and it is ranked as High-importance. The article is also in the "WikiProject Occupations" project, which is currently inactive.
 * This article is not only (formerly) part of the WikiProject Occupations, but also part of a "Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment".

Overall, I thought the article was well-written and developed nicely. I consider the article to be well-developed, with strengths including the organization of the sections and using a neutral tone. The only major recommendation I have is to add representation for minority populations and to share the viewpoint of an underrepresented group in order to work on the equity gap.