💻 Week 08 - Class Roadmap (90 min)

2023/24 Winter Term

📚 Learning Objectives

• Ability to read a scientific article related to data science
• Ability to appraise a scientific article related to data science
• Ability to articulate structured opinions about a scientific article related to data science

In this class, you’ll be act as peer-reviewers and the three articles we’ll be looking at are the following:

• Article 1: Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureate
• Article 2: Association of Sugar-Sweetened, Artificially Sweetened, and Unsweetened Coffee Consumption With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality
• Article 3: Higher airborne pollen concentrations correlated with increased SARS-CoV-2 infection rates, as evidenced from 31 countries across the globe

📝 Phase 1: Preparation before class

You will be split in groups:

• each person within the group will assigned a different article from the list of articles above
• each person within the group needs to review the article assigned to him or her. Would you have accepted or rejected the article assigned to you if you had been on the original reviewer panel? On what grounds (list pros and cons)? You can use the resources on logical fallacies that you can find here or the List 1 table on cognitive biases from (Croskerry 2003) to help you with the task.
• with other members of your group, you can discuss cognitive biases and logical fallacies or share tips on how to do/write a review but not the actual content of the articles. You can check this page or this page for guidance on how to review an article and you can have a look at this page for examples of reviews.
• bring the reviews you have prepared to class

Phase 2 : In the class

🗣️ Step 1 : Discussion among reviewers of the same article (~40 min)

1. Pair up with the students (from other groups) who have read the same article as you (your preparation group will be disbanded as this point)
2. Discuss the content of your reviews with each other and try to reach a consensus decision on the article. Should the article be “accepted or rejected” and on which basis?
3. Write down your thoughts on the document that will be shared with you on Slack by your class teacher

🍵 Break (~10min)

💁 Step 2 : Presentation of reviews (~40min)

1. Make a 7-min presentation about your reviews to the other students (i.e what were the main contributions of the article you reviewed, whether you decided to accept or reject it and on what grounds)
2. Other students can ask clarifying questions after your presentations or make comments (~5min)
3. Does it change your opinion of the article as a group?
4. Your class teacher will briefly comment on your review and article

References

Croskerry, Pat. 2003. “The Importance of Cognitive Errors in Diagnosis and Strategies to Minimize Them.” Academic Medicine 78 (8): 775–80. https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/fulltext/2003/08000/the_importance_of_cognitive_errors_in_diagnosis.3.aspx.