In order to
compare a news article reporting recent scientific findings to a published
scientific paper, I started looking though major news outlets for any science
story that caught my attention. On
time.com, I came across a story that seemed to be popping up all over the
internet, “Captive Orcas Can Learn How to Speak Dolphin, Researchers Say.” From
first impression, the title of the article makes it seem that killer whales are
communicating with dolphins rather than imitating sounds, so I decided to delve
deeper into the story.
After
reading the entire article written by Jack Linshi, a few things really stood
out, first being how short the article was.
Simply three paragraphs were provided to explain and summarize that data
presented. While the title of the
article gave the impression that the whales learned to communicate with
dolphins, the article states that the “killer whales living with dolphins are
capable of imitating their sounds.” After
a short explanation of the science conducted and results, the article concludes
by listing the known species that can learn to mimic sounds. The overall impression from the article was
that the science was basic: some killer whales lived with dolphins and they
learned to make the sounds the dolphins made.
However,
when looking at the paper “Differences in acoustic features of vocalizationsproduced by killer whales cross-socialized with bottlenose dolphins” by Musser
et al., 2014, it became evident that much more intricate science occurred than
what the article reported. The sounds of
a control group of killer whales, control group of bottle-nosed dolphins, and
the test group killer whales co-habitating with bottle-nosed dolphins were
analyzed for a number of quantitative parameters to allow for a thorough
comparison between groups. Also, the
paper provides a thorough introduction explaining that killer whales have been
known to modify their vocalizations to match relatives, different groups of
killer whales, and even sea-lions when orphaned in the wild. Therefore, it was hypothesized that killer
whales co-habitating with dolphins would add dolphin vocalizations to their
repertoire.
Overall, I
believe that the science was reported accurately but not thoroughly. The title gives an over-exaggeration of the
findings of the study, most likely to increase the number of people reading the
article. A very simplistic overview of
the study is provided, highlighting the overall conclusion of the study. However, no background is provided which
makes it difficult to gage the overall impact of the research reported.
-Laura
-Laura
Such a common scenario....an attention grabbing title and oversimplified article. When discussing the differences between whale communication and dolphins, it isn't such a big deal. But I cringe every time I hear or read a story on a topic I am familiar with, that has been drastically oversimplified to the point where I think it shouldn't even be reported. For example, I recently was listening to a piece on NPR regarding GMO crops and the expert being interviewed is actually associated with Utah State. At one point in the story, she oversimplified what a GMO is by stating "you can almost think of it as a type of chemical." Yikes!! The interesting part is she was not anti-GMO crops at all and was otherwise doing a decent job of explaining why they are necessary to feed the ever growing population. But in my opinion, that single statement sends a completely wrong message to listeners that are not educated or otherwise experienced enough to understand the difference.
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting the idea of whales being able to talk or have actual communication with one another, and there being an actual whale language. The title for this reason is very captivating and definitely draws me in as a reader. Whales are very unique creatures and it seems quite interesting to know how they would communicate with one another and how this language between them works. It is also interesting how they compared the different types of whales in this article, such as killer whales, bottle-nosed whales, and dolphins. Seeing what the differences are between these different groups of whales and whether or not these different groups have any relation in communication is definitely an interesting area of scientific research.
ReplyDelete--Jason Phelps