Q. How would oral history or local knowledge fit in with the literature hierarchy? For example if I was researching for a paper on climate change and used oral histories from native cultures in AK would they fit in with the Tertiary literature as “experts”?
A. That is a very interesting question.  I learned early in my engineering career to pay close attention to what such “civilians” said.  They often have very special knowledge. BUT, they are people and subject to faulty (and sometimes self-serving) memories.  In general, they are “experts” about what they personally believe and thus a careful researcher would record that.  When the old-timer says, “In the old days, moose were bigger,” the scientist does not report, “the moose were bigger.” Rather he reports, “The old-timer said the moose were bigger.” In general, it would be irresponsible to ignore pertinent information from civilians, but it would also be irresponsible to report their statements as proof of some fact, especially some fact you could, with diligence (and funding) determine for yourself.  

Q. I was curious about the baseline risk assessment for contaminant remediation. I know that they must also put together a do nothing option. Is this option often gone with for contaminant remediation, and is it appropriate to consider budget in the risk assessment?
A. We’ll look at that again in Module 9, but real risk assessment, including baselines, cost a lot of money and take a lot of time.  In some cases it is cheaper to do the cleanup than the risk assessment.  We used to have that issue all the time with contaminants at remote locations.  It was cheaper to haul things back to a hazardous waste site in another state, than to do the evaluation to leave the material in place – also we needed to close sites out, so the continuous monitoring did not drag on forever. 

Q. When searching for literature related to toxicology through the Rasmuson library webpage, which “database” do you usually begin with?
A. I tried Academic Search Premier and got good results.  As a practical matter, for human health effects I use “toxline” or “medline.”  They usually just give the abstracts.  But if I want the whole artile, I got to the UAF journal list,
http://atoz.ebsco.com/Titles/uoafb?lang=en&lang.menu=en&lang.subject=en and see if they have it.

Q. How can you tell if an article is from peer reviewed source?  Are all journals peer reviewed and all magazines are not? 
A. Generally, if you are in a position to use journal sources to make a decision, you would know something about the journals.  Note:
Then, not all journals are equal.  The high quality journals have many submissions for a few slots and are very selective.  The low quality journals have the opposite problems.  Some journals are “political” and will favor papers that highlight certain results. 

Q. Where do periodicals fit in?
A. Trade newspapers and magazines are useful for background and also for information about the very latest findings –it can take two years for a good journal to get published.  On the other hand, the magazines are not peer reviewed and may contain obvious errors and inaccuracies. 

Q. There was a recent study which was cited on NPR last week concerning scientific journal articles.  The story in a nutshell was:  a reporter went back to the researcher concerning a paper they had written concerning the ability to increase brain capacity by knowing more than one language.  The reporter found, after talking with the author, that the author had done 3 tests initially- 2 came out negative and 1 positive, he then repeated the positive test and it came out negative.  The paper he wrote only gave the results from the one positive and did not mention the 3 negative.  This paper then established a peer reviewed positive test outcome precedence.  This would seem unethical and biases the literature.  Is there a mechanism to address this?  Your thoughts?
A. If the author lied about his negative results, that is clearly dishonest and unethical.  If he did not mention his negative results and they were completely independent tests, it may not be dishonest depending.  For example if there were differences in  the method and the author had a good reason to believe the positive result was more accurate. 
Then, not all journals are equal.  The high quality journals have many submissions for a few slots and are very selective.  The low quality journals have the opposite problems.  Some journals are “political” and will favor papers that highlight certain results.  But, most importantly, the reader making decisions based on published results needs to use a weight-of-evidence approach in drawing conclusions.  It is common, especially for biological tsts with live organisms,  some of the tests give results different from the others.  But now, if you are trying to make a decision based on published results, .how uncertain you should be if there was only one test.  For our dispersant testing, we had 6 to 10 animals in each test and did five replicates of the total test.  This gives some confidence in the result.