JustTheScience

We live in a truly fascinating time.  An unfathomable amount of information on any topic one could dream of is easily and freely available for anyone who wants or needs it.  The ease of accessibility increases constantly to coincide with demand, to the point where trying to remember every new factoid you hear in a day goes well beyond impossible.

For the most part, this is all well and good; no one is going to argue against a more informed public.  However, a serious consequence of this information drive is the lack of individuals critically analyzing where they are obtaining their information from.  How many webpages have you read containing a sentence that begins with “Studies show…” but no actual information other than the results is given?  Who did this study?  Were they an authority on this subject?  What was their sample size?  Did they possess any bias that may skew these results?  Are there conflicting studies that have demonstrated entirely different results?

Here at JustTheScience.com, we decided it was time to do something about this.  We’ve come up with tons of questions that we were curious about, and intend on answering them using one of the most credible sources we know of: peer reviewed scientific literature.  For those of you unfamiliar with this media, peer reviewed literature is also referred to as “primary literature,” in that the authors of each article were also responsible for conducting the study that led to the reported results.  In all of our articles, you will find citations for every article we have used embedded into the sentence where the article provided us with facts we utilized, listed as (author, year of publication) e.g. Smith, 2009.  Following this sentence you will find a link to a footnote, that will link you to the actual article we used.  In some cases, you may have to buy the article in order to read the entire thing.  All articles provide you with an “abstract,” or a brief summary of what the study was about, and what results they determined.  At this point, we are only using publicly available information, so as a reader, you have the ability to double check our facts.  In writing these articles, we are doing our best to find the most up to date and accurate sources we can find; even if this means including articles with contradicting view points.  By doing this, you can be assured our article is based on scientific evidence, as opposed to an unnamed and unknown “study”.

We would like to stress that the research we are presenting is not our own, and we strive to meticulously cite every contributing paper that goes into our articles. We would also like to advise that our articles should not take the place of any advice one might receive from a health professional.  We invite you to contact us with feedback on the quality of our website and our articles, and highly encourage you to submit questions you would like to see answered.

Remember, it is up to you to be decisive about what sources you choose to get your information from; we hope this becomes a source you take advantage of regularly.

–JustTheScience Research Team–