biochemistry discussion
question
Part 1: In your own words describe the concepts of impact factor and replicability. Which do you think is more important in scientific discovery and why? (Due by Friday, October 2nd at midnight)
Part 2: The author suggests that replicability indicies could be used in every day life to help make better life choices. Design and conduct a small replicability study using some facet of your everyday life to evaluate. Record the data that you collect over the course of the next seven days and post them to the discussion board. At the end of 7 days, draw conclusions about your study and what you learned.'
examples (do not copy)
Impact factor - the popularity or importance of a scientific finding based on the reception/public opinion of the finding.
Replicability - the ability for an experiment to be reproduced with consistent results.
Hands down replicability is more important than impact factor in a scientific discovery. If a study and its results are not replicable is it really a scientific study? Replicability is even part of the scientific method in the sense that a study must be replicable and you use replicates in your study to eliminate outliers in your results. Replicability is what gives a finding its weight. A result that is replicable will increase its impact over time as other scientists and researchers use the procedures in their own studies.
part 2:
During the first week of the term I found myself falling asleep while doing homework in the afternoon almost every weekday. My guess was that this was related to not getting enough sleep at night (I was averaging around 6 hours of sleep a night during that first week). So for my replicability study I got either 7 or 8 hours of sleep at night and tracked if I felt tired or fell asleep the following afternoon.
Day |
Hours of sleep | How I felt and whether or not I fell asleep in the afternoon of that day |
Day 1 |
8 | Did not fell tired or fall asleep during the afternoon |
Day 2 |
8 | Did not feel tired or fall asleep during the afternoon |
Day 3 |
7 | Felt tired and slept for an hour in the afternoon |
Day 4 |
8 | Did not feel tired or fall asleep during the afternoon |
Day 5 |
7 | Felt tired but did not fall asleep in the afternoon |
Day 6 |
8 | Felt tired but did not fall asleep in the afternoon |
Day 7 |
7 | Felt tired but did not fall asleep in the afternoon |
Conclusion:
What I found was that getting 7 hours wasn't enough sleep and that 8 hours was a good amount. However there are other factors that probably attribute to whether or not I felt tired that I didn't control for like caffeine intake, amount of exercise that day, and what time I went to sleep the night before. Based on the results I will be trying to get more sleep at nights.
Parker
or
The impact factor is described as the H index which enumerates the total citations attributable to a specific researcher and their studies by any number of given publication sources. The impact factor has the ability to convey which researchers studies are trending, and can communicate relative significance of a person or study. Replicability means that duplication of a study is possible using methods undifferentiated from the original source document. If research is highly replicable, it indicates that preceding results will vary minimally from the results obtained in the primary article. Although the impact factor is an integral way of tracking researchers who have attracted the notice of popular publications or garnered media attention, it merely indicates that their documents were cited.The impact factor does not signify the veracity of a researcher's experiment, methodology, or the results obtained. A high H index can be the consequence of bias, controversial scientific figures, or controversial research. Therefore, it is commonly referenced, but the accuracy of the studies themselves is not being examined. Reproducibility, on the other hand, reveals researchers have published work resulting in other's successful reproduction of experiments; which has been based off of the procedures and information provided by primary studies. This lends reputability to the results of a researcher's scientific studies and is not a product of popularity, unlike the impact factor or H index.
part 2:
The experiment that I performed was to incorporate a new yoga pose into my pre-existing routine and measure the physical response of my body as well as the time I was able to hold. My goal was to increase the time that I spent holding the pose, although I only held it for as long was comfortable. I suspected over the seven day interval I would improve my time and comfortable level in the pose, two-footed inverted staff pose. This would show how repitition increases the body’s tolerance for physical stressors.
-I charted the difficulty of holding the pose on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most difficult
-I rated each attempt with an R= resistance, P=pain, and T=tightness
-Additionally, I recorded the time I was able to comfortably hold the pose before releasing the pose
Friday 2nd | Saturday 3rd | Sunday 4th | Monday 5th | Tuesday 6th | Wednesday 7th |
Held for 8 sec. | Held for 7 sec. | Held for 10 sec. | Held for 8 sec. | Held for 15 sec. | Held for 13 sec. |
R/P/ T | R/P/T | R/P/T | R/T | R/T | R |
8 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 5 |
Thursday 8th | |||||
Held for 18 sec. | |||||
R |
I thought the difficulty level of holding the pose decreased over time, and most significantly I went from having resistance, pain and tightness when holding the pose to just resistance. My time improved, but oscillated up and down through the week. I think if this study was longer I would have a clearer correlation between time held in the pose, ease of the pose ( getting easier) and length of the study.
- I also had my boyfriend participate in this experiment. I’ve had difficulty receiving his results, if I am get them I will post them below.
Alright, I got my boyfriends video and data. Keep in mind he is in WAY better shape than me. So when I asked him to try to improve his time, he increased it every day. He also held the pose for minutes longer than me. But the basic improvement over the course of seven days is still evident. He started out the experiment with R/P/T and ended with only R/T. His day one time was around 3 minutes while his day seven time was 7 minutes. The ease of the pose increased as well.
| Friday 2nd | Saturday 3rd | Sunday 4th | Monday 5th | Tuesday 6th | Wednesday 7th |
| Held for 3 min. | Held for 3:15 min | Held for 4:00 min | Held for 4:30 min. | Held for 4:43 min. | Held for 5:03min. |
| R/P/T | R/P/T | R/P/T | R/P/T | R/T | R/T |
| 9 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 6 |
| Thursday 8th | |||||
| Held for 7:03 min. | |||||
| R/T | |||||
| 4 |
So he also video recorded and edited his daily attempts at holding the posture. We've had trouble with using this video and I couldn't upload it, so suffice it to say. Visually his daily attempts improved in technique as well.
11 years ago 5
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