Talk:Carol A. Barnes

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2020 and 1 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MUBISC-AR, Alisand16, 8421nguyena.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:41, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Secondary Review

Hi! I thought that this was a very well put together article and learned a lot about Dr. Barnes. I liked how you went into detail about her different experiments and gave us information about how each one was done. I agree with other peoples' comments on how it was a little too technical, and could've been shortened to be more concise. It is only a minor change and you don't have to do it, but it's nice to see in the "Honors and Awards" section that the date comes before the awards. It's more consistent since some of the awards have the year before and some have it at the end. To make it more consistent I would just put the date in the beginning. Overall I thought it was a pretty good article. Ecampe (talk) 20:40, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Erin, thank you for your response! As a team, we looked over the research section and made the effort to simplify anything that has seen unclear and confusing to the non-science audience. We agreed that to short or exclude any information prior to the primary and secondary reviews will result in any reports about Carol Barrns’ contribution to the research and neuroscience community. Your comment on the awards and honors section has been noted and changed in the article. --Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16

Secondary Review

I really enjoyed reading about Carol and her research. Her research is interesting and relatable. However, I think the first paragraph under primates in the research section is a little too technical. You might want to consider simplifying it or explaining it further. Some small grammar mistakes I found was under the education section. Riverside should be capitalized because it is a city and there should be a space between "1972.During". --Vale9616 (talk) 20:05, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Val, Thank you for your feedback! Any grammatical errors you have noted and were found has been fixed in the education section. My team and I have gone through the research section and have attempted to simplify it to make it more concise. As a team, we believe that taking out too much information will lose the integrity to report Carol Barnes’ works and contribution to both the research community and the neuroscience community, since most of her work was based on what was explained in the Primate section. --Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16

Untitled

added page. seems to meet the notability (academics) criteria per #1, #3, #5, and #6. Hoppzor (talk) 20:17, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

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Secondary ReviewBNunez13 (talk) 15:52, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I really like how detailed your research section is and how visually the page layout is.

Thank you for your comment! We are glad you enjoyed our article and that the use of pictures and sections was effective. --Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16

Secondary Review

Hi! I think your article is very well written and the grammar is great as well. However, I do think that the award and honors section of the article has too many links. It looks a little messy, and I think a table would help make it neater. You could have 3 columns with the award, date, and description. I think this would help the structure of the article while making it easier to read. Overall, I think the article is very informative and it was really interesting to read, good job! -Dijanazen

Dijanazen thanks for your comment! We had fixed the awards and honors section by including a table per your feedback.--Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16

Primary Review

Overall, this article has a lot of good information and is well structured. The writing is easy to follow in the lead paragraph and sections about her education and career, but the writing becomes more tedious and difficult to understand in the research section. There are some grammatical errors here and there, mostly with comma usage, but nothing that makes it harder to understand the article. I think that some more citations should be included. The education section is lacking citations, and another citation should probably be included at the end of the second paragraph in the lead section. The rest of the article is well cited and verifiable, especially the research section. While the article covered a lot of information and significantly contributes to this page, I think that the research section should be less detail specific and focus more broadly on her research and contributions to the field. I really liked the inclusion of the details about the Barnes Maze since this was an important aspect of her research, but I found a lot of the details about the findings of her research to be more difficult to understand. I think that the information under both the Barnes Maze and Primate Research sections can be condensed to 1 or 2 paragraphs that focus on the main findings and exclude details about experimental procedures. While this information is interesting, it is difficult to understand for a reader without a scientific background who has not read about the studies. Under the Family section, I think it would be good to include the names of her most important mentors or mentees rather than just giving the link to the family tree. I really like how the Awards section is formatted and how it further explains some of the awards in a clear and concise way. I think that the authors of this page did a really good job of presenting the information in a neutral and unbiased way. Another component of this article that was great was the inclusion of multiple pictures. The authors included a picture of Carol A. Barnes, as well as places that she has studied at and areas that she has done research in, including a picture of the Barnes Maze which was very helpful in illustrating the concept.

For reviewing one of the sources, I chose source 13, "Secrets of aging: What does a normally aging brain look like?" This is a review article authored by Carol A. Barnes which discusses research in cognitive decline and her own contributions in her research with animals. I found that this met the criteria for a secondary source in medicine for Wikipedia, since it summarized other journal articles. This source was highlighted and properly cited in the Barnes Maze section of the Wikipedia page, and the information was consistent with that presented in the review. In the Wikipedia article, this source is used to discuss that there are three types of cells in the hippocampus. One type of these cells, the granule cells, decreased with age which led Barnes to believe that this was the weakness in the hippocampal circuit regarding memory. There was further information that related this finding to Alzheimer's Disease, which might be interesting to include in the Wikipedia article. I found that in addition to the information in this review about her own research, there was some information about how she chose to study at Graham Goddard's lab at Dalhousie University. This information could possible be included under the Family section, in relation to her mentors.

Overall, I think you did a really nice job with this article. The structure and organization was really good, and the inclusion of multiple pictures really improves the look of the page! I think your main improvements can come from making the research section more concise and easier to understand for a nonscientific reader.

Kennedy-MU (talk) 20:42, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Kennedy-MU thank you for your response. After looking at your suggestions we as a group went through and edited the page. First, we proofread the page to eliminate more grammatical mistakes as well as make the page more concise. Additionally, we added the proper citations to the education section. Specifically, we believe the research section became harder to understand in the primate research section when more technical jargon is used. We went through and tried to simplify the language so that it could be understood by a more nonscientific audience. However, we did not shorten this section at all since doing so would force us to eliminate information we believe to be important to outlining Carol’s contributions to scientific understanding. We also worked on the family section in making it more complete and informative. Finally, we believe adding more sources or additional information from our existing sources would only increase the length and complexity of our article. Already we noticed problems with getting too technical and many of our reviews raised concerns about the length of sections. Thus, rather than adding even more information, we decided to focus on enhancing the presentation of the information we already included. Also, we included the list of her mentors but since she has 32 mentees, we kept that out as that list would have been exhaustive. Thank you for your insight and suggestions!--Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16

Primary Review

Hello, group. Overall, this article is really well done. I have listed my comments in the order of Wikipedia’s 6 guidelines for a good article (excluding stability). There are a few suggestions, but I’d like to emphasize that they are nitpicky to hopefully help you make what is already a great article even more fine-tuned.

The two lead paragraphs are done well, though I think there could be an external link to information about the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, since the other institutions she's worked for have Wikilinks in the lead paragraph. The picture and info panel are also useful for finding information about Carol Barnes even from a quick look at the page.

The writing quality is a bit inconsistent. The Education and Career sections would benefit from a quick proofread. There were grammatical errors and improper syntax that I found both distracting and confusing. One particular sentence I cannot decipher in the Education section is “During her studies in pursuing a PhD in Psychology, Barnes took a temporary position as a postdoctoral researcher researching in neuropsychology and neurophysiology in the department of psychology at Dalhousie University, at the institute of neurophysiology of University of Osloas well as in Cerebral function at University College of London.” Perhaps if this sentence were split I could understand it better. Also, in the Career section, it says she is the chair of “The Neural Systems-Memory in Aging.” I am not sure what this is or if this is just an incorrect title, perhaps an external link could aid in understanding. This same proofreading is necessary in the Awards and Honors section. The Research section, on the other hand, while it is quite detailed, does seem to get caught up in jargon a bit and might be confusing for a non-scientifically-minded reader. Certain terms should be linked and defined before they are used in a sentence (most were described afterward--I found this a bit confusing and it made me have to read and reread many times). There is also some information in the research section that might not be necessary, particularly in the specific description of the sizing and characteristics of the Barnes maze, since that has its own Wikipedia page already.

The sources you have cited here seem to be consistent with Wikipedia’s guidelines, however there are no citations in either the Education or Career section. Adding citations here will not only verify the information, but might help clarify what certain institutions, departments, and projects are (like the “Neural Systems” thing I mentioned before). I did notice that four of the citations in the research section are primary, so I would just advise rereading that section and making sure it complies with Wikipedia’s guidelines about not reporting data from primary sources as biomedical ‘fact.’ I didn’t notice anything standing out when I read the article, but I’m sure another read through looking for cues like “might,” “can,” “suggest,” etc. couldn’t hurt.

There does seem to be broad coverage in topics, and I particularly appreciate that you split her research contributions into subsections to aid in understanding and to give a brief overview of the many facets of her research. One thing that could be expanded upon is the departments/institutes which she leads/has led - has she contributed to any specific projects, proposals, seminars, etc.? While it is clear that she has contributed a lot in terms of generating research, it seems there is an administrative aspect of her contributions which could be expanded upon. If you choose to include this, it could be a subsection of “Career” or its own section -- it might also incorporate the “Supporting Women and the Underprivileged in Neuroscience,” which as of right now seems a bit underdeveloped as its own main section.

The tone of this article seems fairly neutral to me, with verifiable data. The only place where I question this is the opening statement of the “Supporting Women” section. When I first read it, the “lauded by her peers and the public” and “outstanding work” read slightly non-neutral and could be replaced with a more ‘factual’ leaning sentence that mentions how she has won awards for and participates in programs dedicated to promoting women in neuroscience.

The inclusion of images in this article is really great, but I almost wonder if there are too many? I found the images of the universities where she has attended/taught cool but distracting. They aren’t relevant to Carol Barnes specifically, and I could find them if I click the hyperlinks to those Wiki pages. I think removing them would even add more impact to the other images you’ve included, really showing them off as purposefully chosen.

A final question I have about this article is the inclusion of the “family” section. The anecdote about her grandfather is cool, but I wonder if it could be placed in another section, perhaps in the leading paragraph of the research or education section. Linking to Neurotree and telling the reader to look there seems a bit odd as well. I think that mentor/mentee relationships are important to note in science, and I commend that, but wonder if there is a better way to do this? My group created a section called “Notable Colleagues” with Wikilinks to her mentors/mentees that had Wiki pages. The only source we cited was Neurotree, and a curious person could go check that for others as well. We based this off of Eric Kandel’s page.

The source I chose to review is number 12, “Impact of Aging Brain Circuits on Cognition”. This article is a secondary source, as it is a review/compilation of many primary sources. It is published in the European Journal of Neuroscience, which is reputable and scientific in nature. Carol Barnes is one of two authors, so it is relevant to include for her Wikipedia article. The information included in your article definitely comes from that review. The review has a lot of sections to it, corresponding to age-related cognitive, anatomical, and physiological changes in both the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. I think your description of the logical connection between cognitive and anatomical changes is nice within the paragraph you’ve included. There is a lot of focus on hippocampus in this Wikipedia article, so the prefrontal cortex information could be expanded upon. However, if Barnes’s research mostly focused on hippocampus, I understand why it isn’t included. The physiological changes are not described in detail here, and I understand this is probably due to their scientific specificity (molecular mechanisms, very specific anatomy, etc.) I think you could touch on it in terms of synaptic plasticity (if explained properly), since I think this is a general mechanism of cognitive processing that a non-scientific reader could understand. I think you could find other sections (not necessarily the Barnes maze section) to add information from this review throughout the article. I also think you could include a sentence and citation for this in your lead paragraph for the research section, since it specifically mentions that age-related changes of the brain seem to be conserved across mammals. Since this comes from a review authored by Barnes, and is the basis for using animal models, this seems relevant to mention.

I hope you find this review helpful for making further improvements on your article. Nice work so far, I really enjoyed reading it and learned a lot!!

Cschmitz253 (talk) 22:18, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Cschmitz253 thank you for your review and comments. First, we made sure to proofread the article and fix grammatical mistakes. We did fix the sentence you pointed out in the education section, by splitting it into two. Thank you for that suggestion! Similarly we made the appropriate edits to the career section in order to make the information more clear. In the research section we simplified much of the terminology to make the article more appropriate for a nonscientific audience. Additionally, we attempted to present definitions more in tandem with the terms they describe. We added the proper citation for the education and career section. Also thank you for bringing up the point about reporting scientific fact. We made an express effort to go through those primary articles and add statements such as “these results suggest” or “these results may implicate…”. In terms of expanding upon various institutes, rather than describing each one we decided to include external links for individuals who may be interested in learning more information to follow. Furthermore, the instance of a non-neutral tone you raised concerns over has been reworded to follow with the guideline of neutrality. We also had concerns over having too many images that are distracting so hearing that concern prompted us to make our image inclusions more concise and thoughtful. Finally, in terms of your source review, we did include information regarding the Prefrontal Cortex in the third paragraph of the primate section; however, we never explicitly named or drew any connections to it. After reading your comment we went through and named its role in executive functions and explained how the age related changes described were tied to functioning of the PFC. We also went and added a list of her mentors in the family section instead of having only the link. However, the list of her mentees would have been exhaustive (there were 32), so we decided to leave that out for someone to look at on their own time if interested.--Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16

Secondary Review

Hello! I enjoyed reading your article, and think there is a lot of great information within it. I felt that everything was very concise and clear, but began to get bit overwhelmed when reading the "Research" section. There is a lot of important content within this section, but for the purpose of a Wikipedia page I think some of it can be made a bit more general and not so focused on all of the details of each study. For example, in the "Primate Research" section, the first two paragraphs are summarizing studies she has done. Possibly, instead of mentioning the paper in the beginning of the paragraph and summarizing specific details the study, you could just include the main finding of the study and how it contributed to her research focus overall. The "Primate Research" section has a lot of good information, and I think if it was made a bit more general it would allow readers that do not understand science or detailed research to have a better understanding of Carol A. Barnes contributions to science. Possibly some of the topics could be split up into shorter paragraphs and add a bit more space between ideas in order to visually see when the information changes, specifically the second to last paragraph in the "Primate Research" section when discussing attentional monitoring versus set shifting. Finally, I liked how you included the information under the "family" section, and think it gives a bit more context on why Carol A. Barnes is interested and involved in the science she studies. Overall, I really enjoyed your article and can tell that a lot of time and effort went in to understanding Carol A. Barnes and her contributions to science. --NCBiology (talk) 22:29, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Nicole, thank you for your comment! We agree that it is important to generalize and take out the most important aspects of the research. However, as a team, we came to an agreement that any further edits made to the research to cut down on the information that has already been provided will not completely explain her works and constitutions. We made the effort to simplify the primate research to a broader range of audience to understand the language. For formatting and visual purposes, paragraphs have been split up to reduce the appearance of bulky-ness of the article.--Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16

Primary Review - Alia Sondalle

Hello Authors!

Overall, I really like the formatting, flow of the article, and the intellectual phrasing. I think the intro paragraph has great material and does a nice job of condensing all of the information in a concise, clear way.

For the Education section, One tiny typo I found was after "Psychology in 1972," as there should be space after the period and before "During." I also think you do a great job of stating where she went, what she studied, and the positions she held during her education years. I'm also impressed with the images, which are directly corresponding to the material.

The Career section is very good as well! I like that you have a little information about what she is currently doing at the BIO5 institute, maybe one thing you could add was what she did previously. The paragraph talks about the positions she currently holds, the chair position she is currently in, and where she's working today. Did you find anything she previously did? Or has previously accomplished besides schooling? Just an idea!

I really love the way the Research section is formatted. The introduction page does a great job of stating what she's involved with, how her research is conducted, how they use the animal models and other information regarding her area of her current research. The Barnes Maze section does a great job of stating her previous work and how it came about. I think the paragraph does a great job of explaining her work very accurately and precisely, with great usage of hyperlinks to other pages on Wikipedia. Was there a link for "T-mazes?" Adding one there may be beneficial if that's applicable. Overall, I think an average individual would be able to read this entire Research section and get a good grasp at what Carol's experiments were, how they were performed, and how it benefitted to the study of the spatial learning and memory, along with primate aging and the brain structures involved. One thing that could make this section just a little more perfect would be to add a little more hyperlinks (if possible) to some of the paragraphs and add more pictures to help others grasp the content of the brain and what is actually being studied and how.

For the Family section, I would recommend trying to find more information if possible. However, I really love that you found her family tree and that it's linked! That is a great addition!

The Supporting Women section is a section that I think would be best under the Awards and Honors section. I think sectioning like how the Research section is, would make it so all of her awards and recognitions are in one area, not two. Other than that, I didn't see any other typos, and I think it does a great job of stating all of the information you could about each award/honor.

Overall, your article looks and reads amazingly! You are concise and to the point, with in-depth information that is portrayed with minor typos and is in a sophisticated manner. I appreciate all of the images, however, I think having images about the research section is more important than having images regarding California, only because the research section is the most challenging to understand. Great work!!

- Alia Sondalle

Alia thank you for your review! First, we went through the article and proofread, looking for issues such as you described. Instead of including more information regarding the BIO5 institute, we decided to link the website homepage for those who may be interested in reading more. We currently do not have any more information about her prior careers yet, we did include that she has taken on more positions and directorships over the years; however, that is a really good suggestion for anyone who may be revising this page in the future. We also did link the Wikipedia page of the Barnes Maze in the subsection heading so that those who are interested in reading more have a link to follow. We wanted to keep the Supporting Women in Neuroscience section as its own section because we think it deserves more emphasis as it is a major award, but also provides an important link between research science and community involvement. In regards to the family section, we added a list of her mentors but decided to not include the list of mentees since there are 32 of them - the list would’ve been exhaustive. The link is still there for anyone interested at looking who her mentees are on their own time.--Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16

Secondary Review

After reading your article, it is evident that it is filled with a lot of interesting information. I like that you guys have included images across the whole article. The lead paragraphs introduce the information that will be addressed very well. When looking at the article, there are some sections that are very long in comparison to some others. Although very informative, I believe the research section could be condensed so that it does not overwhelm the readers. Also, I would be more descriptive in the image captions, as they are just stating what is being pictured but not their relation to the person you are talking about.

SihamS15 (talk) 02:04, 15 April 2020 (UTC)SihamS15

SihamS15, Thank you for your response! As a team we had gone through the research section to make the information more condensed and concise. We agreed that any further information should not be eliminated in risk of losing the integrity of the contributions Barnes’ has done. We also left the captions on the pictures in their simplicity as we believed there was not a need to further explain them.--Alisand16 (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Alisand16