Evaluation of General Sources

One of the recent controversies that is related to Physiology, directly or indirectly, has to do with Chris Froome, a cyclist in the Tour De France, and extensive data on his bodily functions during the race. In this blog post I will look at two articles on the issue, one from The New York Times, and the other from The Science of Sport, and will evaluate their credibility.

Mdlsoft. "Cycling." 09/15/13 via Clipart. Public Domain Dedication License.

The URL of The New York Times is .com, as is the URL of The Science of Sport, suggesting that they are just normal websites, and not organizations, universities, or government owned domains. This does not discredit either article, but does not add to their credibility.

The author of The New York Times’ article is Ian Austen, who has written around 2,500 articles for the New York Times, starting in 1998. Because of his longstanding and experienced career, Ian Austen is most likely a credible author. The author of The Science of Sport’s article is Ross Tucker, who has incredible experience with athletics, as an NFL player and host of an athletic podcast. Because of his extensive sports knowledge, Tucker is most likely a credible author.

Neither article has information about when they were updated, but both are fairly recent articles. 

The purpose of both articles is to bring a controversy and shady situation to the attention of the public. The New York Times is reaching a more broad audience, where The Science of Sport is alerting more of a specific audience of sports fans. However, both the articles are purposed to raise awareness of certain, possibly incriminating, data.

The New York Times has a picture of the cyclist in question, and another picture of a cyclist, but The Science of Sport article has no graphics.

Both articles come at the situation from an informative position. As the issue in question is already controversial, even discussing the evidence is hinting at foul play by Froome, but there are no overbearing biases or accusations from either article.

The New York Times article links footage of the race discussed, as compared to a past race, and also has links to information on key ideas mentioned in the article. The Science of Sport article has links to more content on the Tour De France and Cycling.

Once again, I learned from Lauren and Jon's blog posts that I have a lot to learn and to implement into my own work. First off, I need to find ways to make my controversy more relatable to more people, as right now it is pretty specific, and limited to a smaller audience. Second, there are many more stylistic things I can work in to my blog in general. Color coordination, clearer organization, and better heading will help my posts to be easier to read.