Evaluation of General Sources

In this post I will be talking about a recent controversial piece published in Nature.  I have found two sources that relate to this article that people have used to discuss the controversy and relay their opinions.  I will analyze these documents using A Student's Guide to First Year Writing.

trailfan. "String Theory?". June 25, 2007 via flickr. Creative commons licence.

A Crisis at the Edge of Physics

URL:
My first article I found on this controversy was from the URL nytimes.com. This URL is a .com URL which means that anyone can create them, but this is a reliable source because it is a official newspaper website.

Author:
One of the writers of this article, Adam Frank, is a physicist and writer while the other, Marcelo Gleiser, is a writer and researcher in the field of scientific understanding.  Both these authors have the qualifications necessary to write on this subject matter.

Last Updated
The last time this piece was updated was June 5th of 2015 meaning that the information in the article is up to date pretty well and the links in the page still work.  The links also take me to sites with the the most up to date information about the topics in the article.

Purpose
The purpose of this article is to inform the reader about both sides of the argument presented by the original issue.  This is in the opinions section of The New York Times website and presents both the arguments for why it should be allowed to replace observational science with theory and why we shouldn't allow it.

Graphics
The graphic in this article is of a man standing at the edge of a plank in the universe with no apparent road to go down.  This relates to the article because it is how some physicists thing the road is going down and that we have no way of knowing what to do with physics and experimentation.

Position on Subject
This article gives both sides of the argument presenting a relatively neutral bias towards the matter at hand.  When it comes to profit, the only profit comes from reporting the news as it is because it is a newspaper website so a neutral bias is necessary.

Links
The only links in the article are to things that the general public may not know about.  Since this is an opinion article and written in a newspaper there is not much citation that takes place.

"Falsifiability And The Integrity Of Physics"

URL

The URL this article was posted to was science20.com, which is a pseudo-journal that has certain writers and contributors who write various pieces about science. Again, because this is a .com domain, anyone can create it, but the source is fairly reliable because it is backed by many contributors who know what they are talking about.

Author

The author has the ability to write intellectually on this controversy because he has been in the field of physics for some time now and knows about how physics actually works.  He has a PhD which also means he's had to go through the rigor of physics to attain his PhD.

Last Updated

The last time this article was updated was December 22, 2014, which while was nearly a year ago, is still close enough to both the current information and the event that the facts still hold up.

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to persuade an audience about the authors opinion and personal experience on the matter at hand. There does not appear to be any personal gain from this article.

Graphics

The only graphics in this article are of two physicists discussing something and Richard Feynmen, who talks heavily about the scientific method and how it should be used which relates to the article that is at the center of this controversy.

Position on Subject

This article takes a bias that is opposite to that of the writers of the original article.  His one sided argument is the way that he is able to persuade his audience to believe his side of the argument.

Links

The only links in this article are the ones that take you back to the original controversial article. Other than that since it is an opinion article it does not cite other sources.