Alison Nielsen

Assignment 5: Evaluating Sources

Book Source
Citation:
Heiss M. L., & Heiss R. J. (2007) The Story of Tea A Cultural History and Drinking Guide.
Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.
The primary audience for this source would be the general public. I know this because of
the glossy photo on the front, the general publics common jargon in the text, and all of the
colorful photos on each page. The information in this book does meet the expectations of the
general audience because it gives a good overview of tea: the history, the manufacturing, the
health effects, and much more. It also gives its information in a friendly, general way that makes
things easy to understand. This source does fit my research needs because it has a very detailed
background on tea, and I would need this for my background information. The Story of Tea also
has a health benefits chapter, so that directly applies to my research project. It talks about the
various beneficial tea antioxidants, the research being done on tea and health, and caffeine. This
book provides a great overview to my tea topic.
In terms of biases and faulty reasoning, I did not find anything overly obvious. The only
thing I did find a little different is that a husband and a wife wrote the book together. However,
although they express their love for tea in the acknowledgements, the book itself is rather
objective and fact based. Therefore, instead of explaining the nonexistent biases and faulty
reasoning, I will explain two exemplary instances of scholarship. In the section pertaining to the
research on tea and health, each and every point made was backed up with a supporting study or
researcher. For example, when talking about the antioxidant concentration in tea, the authors
give many different studies that show their findings (UCLA Center for Nutrition, USDA Human
Nutrition Research Center on Again at Tufts University, etc.). Additionally, this book also does a
great job of objectively giving its information, rather than being bias. For example, when talking
about caffeine in tea, the book admits that there are many studies that say tea has a lot of
caffeine, and many studies that say tea doesn't have any caffeine at all. It does not state their
opinion on the issue, it just states the facts and moves on.
The bibliography of this book is pretty long. All of the citations were cited in MLA
formatting, and most of their sources were from the early 2000s. So, the relevancy of the articles
cited was rather good. The authors cited various books and articles, and their research seems
through and well thought out. In terms of the source being up to date, it barley misses the five
year cut off. This source was published in 2007, so it is seven years old. Although this source
would not be categorized as up-to-date, I believe that for the reasons I am using it for, a
general knowledge and background overview, I believe that the 7-year-old date is just fine. If I
were using this for health benefits specifically, I would want a more up to date book, but since it
is just for background knowledge, I believe this book does what it needs to do.
The authors of this book, Mary Lou and Robert Heiss, are in the tea business and did
receive much help when writing this book from nutritionists, agricultural scientists, and tea
connoisseurs. In terms of credentials and experience, Mary Lou and Robert have the experience
because they went on tea trips to Asian countries to get information and research tea. For
credentials, however, the Heiss couple does not have any credentials listed, other than that they
are in the tea business and have written two other books. But, in terms of experience and all the
research done, I do still believe that this book is a valid resource for my research project. The
publisher of this book, Ten Speed Press, does not play a huge role in this type of research. Ten
Speed Press is known for its cookbooks and non-fiction, so in terms of tea, it doesnt have much
overlap.
When searched in EBSCO, this book has been referred to five times: three reviews, one
academic journal, and one new story. This book has not been cited a lot, and therefore may not
be the best source for a lot of information. If I could rate this book on a scale of 1-10, I would
rate it as a 5.5. Although there does seem to be a wealth of knowledge in this 407-page book, I
do not like that the authors do not have many credentials and that this is a book for the general
public. Not to mention, it has tea recipes in the back of the book, so it is not the most scholarly.
However, this book does have a great overview of tea and a lot of useful information. Therefore,
I gave this book a 5.5.

Scholarly Journal Article
Citation:
Ruxton, C. C. (2013). Emerging evidence for tea benefits. Nutrition Bulletin, 38(3), 287-301.
doi:10.1111/nbu.12040
The primary audience for this scholarly article would be anyone in the field of medicine
or anyone academically interested in tea and health. The information in this article does meet the
expectations of that audience because it is scholarly. One can tell that Dr. Carrie Ruxton is a
professional in her field of expertise, and all of the information in her article does fulfill the
questions being asked about tea and health. This source fits my particular needs as a researcher
perfectly. It not only gives me different health effects of tea, it gives me all of the different
studies being done with various types of tea: health and black tea, health and green tea, health
and oolong tea, etc. The content of this academic article directly applies to my research project
because it answers my research question in full. The information in this article is so vast that
even something so specific as tea and tooth loss is mentioned. Anything I could question about is
probably in this article.
In this research article, I did not detect any biases, unsupported claims, dubious support
or faulty reasoning whatsoever. This source did a spectacular job of supporting its claims and
stating the facts. Dr. Ruxton did her research and is simply informing her readers of what she had
learned. There is no biases or faulty reasoning in this article. Therefore, I wanted to shed light on
two exemplary instances of scholarship that I found in this source. I liked that in her Methods
section she told her readers exactly what she searched in databases. For example, one of the
search terms she used was tea and weight management. As another researcher on this topic, this
makes things easy for me to go and search everything she searched to see where all her
information came from and see what other information I could find from those articles.
Additionally, this scholarly journal article had many tables to refer to. Although Dr. Ruxton
describes what she found in detail, she also put tables in her article of said information that is
described in detail. This made things very easy to get a general overview of what she found in
research, and then one could go and read more in depth about said topics.
When comparing the book, The Story of Tea, to this scholarly journal article, I am
amazed at the differences between their works cited. When I first looked at the Story of Tea, I
thought its works cited looked great, but now comparing its works cited to this journal articles
works cited, this journal articles works cited blows the books works cited out of the water.
There were so many more sources cited on this article than the books. I found this amusing
because the book is 407 pages, and this article is 14 pages. Another thing that I liked about this
articles works cited is that there is no source that Dr. Ruxton cited that is older than 2000. This
shows that her research on tea and health is relevant. Her citations were also well written and her
research was also well cited, as mentioned above.
This source is up to date; it is one year old. The relevancy of this source shows the
newest information and research being done in the health world on tea. This is important because
when doing this type of research, the newest material is better. The author, Dr. Carrie Ruxton
does have experience in the nutrition and health field because she has a PhD in nutrition and has
written various scholarly journal articles. Dr. Ruxton does have the experience and the authority
to write on this subject because nutrition is her expertise. Additionally, this publication, The
Nutrition Bulletin, directly relates to this field of study because it is a publication of all
nutritional based articles. Although this publication does not surround the world of tea
specifically, it does surround the world of health, which I am also researching.
Strangely, when I searched this article in the database, no citations or reviews of this
article came up. This may only be because its such a new article. However, I am going to take
this point with a grain of salt, and hope that it hasn't been reviewed or cited because it is just so
new. Everything else in the article checks out as a well-written, academic article, and I dont
want this little part to hold me back from using it. All in all, if I could rate this article on a scale
of 1-10, I would rate it as a 9.5. I would rate it as a 9.5 because of its wealth of knowledge and
the credibility that comes with it.

Scholarly Journal Article
Citation:
Trevisanato, S. I., & Kim, Y. (2000). Tea and health. Nutrition Reviews, 58(1), 1-10. Retrieved
from http://search.proquest.com/docview/212315584?accountid=27180

The primary audience for this source is anyone in the academic/scholarly world of
medicine and tea. The information in this article directly relates to this audience because it
discusses the health benefits of tea in all sorts of cancers and diseases. This source does fit my
needs as a researcher; however, it does not talk about green tea, specifically, enough. The content
of this academic article fits my research project because it talks about the effects tea has on
diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, and cancers, such as stomach cancer. It talks about these
points through explaining various research experiments done and the results of said experiments.
Although I did not detect any biases, unsupported claims, dubious support or faulty
reasoning, I did not appreciate that Trevisanato and Kim did not include the types of tea that
were being used in the experiments being done. That itself seems to make their main points a
little less supported or credible. However, other than that, there are some exemplary instances of
scholarship in this article. For example, I liked how this article had so many types of cancer that
tea can affect. With each type, it listed a study that had been done about tea and that kind of
cancer, so it is really useful in that aspect. Additionally, this article was so detailed. Not only did
it talk about nine different cancers, it also discussed the benefits of tea paired with disease and
other health aspects (such as iron absorption).
This article was cited with footnotes. This was a fine way to cite this article, and the
authors did a good job in doing so. The bad thing about these sources used to create this article,
however, is that they are dated back into the 1990s. Therefore, the authors of this article really
did not look to relevant sources when researching this subject. This source itself is also not up to
date. It was published in 2000, and therefore, cannot be considered up to date. Therefore, now
actually looking at this article, I would definitely use the one described before this one for my
research because relevancy is important when it comes to the medical field.
In the author affiliation section, I learned that authors Trevisanato and Kim are both
doctors. Doctor Trevisanato works for Banting and Best Institute of Medical Research and
Doctor Kim works as a gastroenterologist in St. Michaels Hospital. These doctors are both from
Toronto, Canada. These doctors then do have authority on the subject of medicine because they
are well-qualified doctors. Although they do not have authority on tea, the medical side of
things makes up for it. In terms of credibility, this publication, Nutrition Reviews, is a scholarly
journal, and therefore it does have credibility. Scholarly journals have to be accepted by other
scholars to become a scholarly journal. So, this journal is also scholarly. Because this publication
is a nutritional publication, it plays a direct role with the health, and therefore, health benefits of
tea.
From the looks of it, it does not look like there are any reviews or citations from other
publications of this article. Although this is a good article, I find this strange that there arent any
other articles citing it. This may be because there isnt as much of a hype on tea and health
than there is on terrorism or any other hot topic. If I could rate this article, based on all of the
conclusions made above, I would rate this article as a 7. I would rate it as a 7 because it is not as
relevant or as specific to green tea as I had hoped.

Popular Magazine Source
Walker, M. (2014, March 1). Steep Perks: Why Drinking Tea Is Good for Your Health. Fitness.
The primary audience for this source is simply the general public (anyone who reads
Fitness magazine). The information in this magazine format does meet the expectations of a
general audience because it is short, sweet, and fun to read. There is no boring information, and
there are no boring word choices in this article because in order to amuse the general public these
articles need to fit their need for a quick easy read. This article does apply to my research project,
but I wouldn't use it for anything other than background knowledge. Other articles have been
proven to be more useful than this one.
In terms of biases and faulty reasoning, I did find a few things. This article is meant for
the general public, so there are happier words and less straight facts. There is more fluff to this
article, but I wouldn't consider it a bias because they are just stating the facts in a different way.
However, when it came to stating facts, saying research shows and not citing your sources or
explaining what research it is, doesn't really cut it. Therefore a lot of these claims were dubious
because I have no idea where this author got her information. There is a mix between good and
bad information. Additionally, there is no note or bibliography or works cited. Therefore, I
would say that this source is not a credible one because I have no idea where Walker got her
information (except where she stated so and so said this).
This source is up to date it was written in 2014. The relevancy of this article does help
the fact that it has new information, but I still would not consider this a good source for the
research project because I have no idea where Walkers sources came from. There is also not
enough information to really receive any new information other sources have already stated.
Author Melissa Walker also does not have the authority to be writing this article from a medical
standpoint. Walker is an author for the Fitness magazine, not a doctor. So, especially because she
does not have the authority, I would hope that she cited her sources in a works cited, but she did
not.
Fitness magazine itself does play a role in the area of health, but not as much as the
previous publications Ive looked at. Additionally, this source has not been cited before, and
there are no comments or reviews made about it. Many other sources would not cite this one
because there are better sources out there stating the same information. On a scale of 1-10, I
would rate this magazine article as a 4. It does what it needs to do for the general audience
looking for a good read, but it is not a reliable source to refer back to for research because of the
lack of citations, authority, and specificity.

World Wide Web Source
Scott, P. (n.d.). Green Tea Health Benefits. Retrieved October 19, 2014.
The primary audience for this World Wide Web source is the general public looking at
health benefits of tea. This information does meet the expectations of the general public because
it explains the various benefits and myths of tea. As a researcher, this source does not fit my
research because it is far too broad. However, this source does give me the other side to the
health benefits of green tea, it talks about how there really arent any. So, this would be a good
article to branch off of to understand the other side of things.
Just like the last article, this source is very general. It doesn't seem to be bias, but it does
seem to have faulty reasoning (with the lack of citations). There are quotes from doctors and
people with PhDs, but these are not cited anywhere, and the other points this source talks about
are not cited anywhere. This takes a lot of credibility away from the article because no one can
track or check the information being used. Therefore, there is a lack of good support, because I
don't know where this one good Swiss study comes from, and there seems to be faulty
reasoning because there arent enough sources to be making a large claim like you shouldn't
count on green tea to prevent cancer when there is only one source listed saying that.
This source also does not have a date as to when it was published. Therefore, there is no
telling as to when it was written, and it would not be a good research source to use. Additionally,
the author, Paula Scott, is simply a writer for this website, and a few others. Although a doctor
reviewed this source, the author herself does not have the credentials necessary to be considered
an authority on the subject. The publication, however, WebMD, does play a role in the medical
field because it consists of all sorts of medical descriptions and analyses. However, when it
comes to tea, WebMD does not play a huge role in that research specifically.
In terms of this source being cited or reviewed by other scholarship, there is not much to
review. This source is just a general outline of the benefits and myths of drinking tea, and other
sources probably would not find this source credible enough to be reviewed or cited. All in all, I
would rate this source as a 3 because it wasn't credible and it didn't fulfill my needs as a
researcher.