User:SonyaBIOL497/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

With this course examining the social issues as a result of a lack of representation in the Biology field, I believe that this class includes an interdisciplinary study of biology and political science/ social justice. For this reason, I chose the article, Biology and Political Science. This intersection is especially important since Biology can help us to understand more about human innate and adaptive behaviors which can have an impact on our political attitudes, behaviors, and social interactions with other people. My first impression of biology and political science was that the page would discuss how the psychobiology aspect of biology can be used to understand more about our political orientations and opinions on controversial topics such as gun reform.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section
The first sentence in the lead section gives a clear and concise definition of what biology and political science teaches. The author/s also include a link to one broad term used in the first sentence (political behavior), which is good use of the link tool for people who are not aware of what political behavior is. The lead section includes a brief description of the History section in the article by introducing the term biopolitics as a name for this field. However, synonymous names for this field, which is associated with the History section of the article, is the only concept that the author/s include in the lead section. There isn't any representation of the Topics section of the article in the lead. Thus, more detail could be included in the lead section. The lead does not include information that is not present in the article.

Content
The articles content which includes History and Topics of the field of Biology and Political Science are relevant to the article. Content could be more up to date, considering that the most recent reference was published in 2012, almost 10 years ago. Content that is missing in this article may include: people or public figures in biopolitics. The article also doesn't address topics related to historically underrepresented populations, which would be very beneficial content to include in this article, considering that it talks about the intersection between biology and political science. The Topics section of this article could certainly use more expansion. The three sentences in the Topics section are a good introduction to the section, but there is no actual content in this section. There doesn't seem to be specific examples of topics and research in biopolitics. Adding specific biopolitical research could be a great opportunity to make this article more up to date with its content. The last paragraph in the History section is hard to read and understand its relevance in this article. Therefore, this paragraph could be room for editing to make it more concise and clear.

Tone and Balance
For the most part the article has a neutral tone. However, the last paragraph in the History Section feels like the contributor/s are trying to make an argument. This is especially true in the sentence, "In this sense the rise of Biopolitics represents...". To me it feels like the author/s are giving their interpretation of the sources they used, instead of just summarizing the sources they used to discuss the History of Biopolitics. Other than this, there is no heavy bias or persuasion in the article, and no over or underrepresented viewpoints. As highlighted in the Content section of this evaluation, topics related to underrepresented populations are not included, making minority viewpoints not included as well in this article.

Sources and References
All facts in the article are backed up by a reliable secondary source. The last paragraph in the History section includes the sources, but does not link the reference to the end of the sentences when the source is used. Instead, the contributor mentions the source in the sentence. This should be changed so that it is clear that the source is being properly cited. Sources are thorough. but not very current (most current source was from 2012). Sources do not seem to be written by a diverse panel of authors. Majority of the first authors and authors in general are male, and there does not seem to be any representation of people of color. All references are peer-reviewed articles so there is no need for improvement on finding good, credible sources for this article. More recent peer-reviewed articles would help this article such as this peer-reviewed article about biopolitics and the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the links in the Further Reading section of the article worked except for one link where the item was no longer available.

Organization and Writing Quality
The article is well written, clear, concise, and free of grammatical errors for the most part. The only exception to this would be the last paragraph of the History section, where the writing is a little too wordy and could be cut down. The History section follows an order where the beginning paragraphs are during an earlier time period and the paragraphs toward the end discuss a more recent time period. The last paragraph in the section breaks this trend. Therefore, reorganizing the paragraphs in this section would be beneficial especially since this section discusses the history of biopolitics.

Images and Media
No images or media are included in this article. This is also something that would be beneficial to have in learning about Biopolitics.

Talk Page Discussion
There is currently no discussion in the Talk Page for this article.

Overall Impressions
Overall, I believe that there is a lot of room for improvement for this article. My biggest concerns for this article are the need for more content in general. This most importantly includes content related to and source by historically underrepresented populations. I also believe that more recent content should be included in the article. The article's strengths is its writing quality as it is concise and clear for the most part. I especially find the lead section to be clear and concise which is really important to readers who want a brief overview of the article. Finally, I would conclude that the article is underdeveloped and that it could definitely expand in content and be more up-to-date.