Evaluation of New York Times Stories

I had never really looked through the New York Times before, so it was nice to just look through and read what I wanted to read. I didn't see very many that were arguing something, mostly just reporting on something that happened. Nevertheless, they are still just as interesting to read.


Number One!
The first article I read was in the Health section of the New York Times, and was titled "Scientists Move Closer to Understanding Schizophrenia's Cause" by Benedict Carey.

The protagonists of this story seems to be the scientists themselves that made this breakthrough, Steven McCarroll and Beth Stevens. McCarroll is an associate professor of genetics at Harvard, and Stevens works at Boston Children's Hospital as an assistant professor of neurology.These two are the center of the story because together they made an exciting discovery about how and why Schizophrenia appears in humans.

The first part of the breakthrough took place in Steven McCarroll's lab at Harvard. Here, they discovered that the MHC locus produced the C4 gene, which then created two proteins called C4-A and C4-B. The C4-A gene seemed to be the one that was causing the disease due to his study. However, they got a second opinion with Beth Stevens at Boston's Children Hospital. In Stevens's lab, this theory was supported even more due to lab testing on mice.

There doesn't seem to be a debate happening in this story. Although this ahs been a major breakthrough, McCarroll, Stevens, and other scientists who read their report all seem to agree this is one step in a very long process. This is an amazing discovery for scientists studying this disease, but they all agree they are still far from forming treatment or a cure.

Number Two!
The second article I read was from the Science section, and it was titled, "How to Get Five Planets Into a Single Photograph" by Nicholas St. Fleur.

The main character in this story is Greg Hogan, an astronomer from Georgia. He is the center of the story because he was the person who took the photograph and managed to fit all five planets in one single shot.

This story takes place in the Oaky Woods in Kathleen, Georgia. He woke up his sons and they ventured into the wilderness at 5:30 in the morning on Sunday to look at the stars and planets. It was 25 degrees outside; however, no one seemed to care- just wanted to enjoy the experience.

There doesn't seem to be a very significant debate in this article, although there was a suggestion on what type of camera to use, since a simple iPhone refuses to get Mercury in the picture.

For those of you curious, here is the picture that Hogan took!

Greg Hogan, "Untitled" 1-24-16 via The New York Times.