This paper asks whether there is a division between the local medicinal knowledge of the Indigenous Amazonian Tsimane ethnic group in Bolivia. This is the third largest ethnic group in the lowlands of the country. They conducted some interviews and surveys with a sample of this population to know how the Tsimane’ conceptualize and use local and Western forms of medicinal knowledge. They concluded that the two are complementary, not interchangeable. Both have value in their own right and need to be recognized as such, with equal weight given to each.
I think that this is a very good article for several reasons:
1. The authors provided a very concise, detailed, and comprehensive background on the topic, citing relevant literature.
2. The introduction is not too long.
3. Due to the complexity of the work they have done, they added a section to describe their objectives.
4. They gave a brief explanation of the ethnic group they worked with.
5. They also gave details from that group about health, medical treatments, causes of illness, and use of medicine.
6. They described the study site and sampling method, as well as the methods of data collection and how they were going to conduct the analysis of these data.
7. They also mentioned the limitations of this methodology.
8. They presented the results in a few subsections to separate them by topic.
9. They made a not so long discussion, citing some relevant literature.
10. They finished with a three-paragraph conclusion in your own words, citing only one other paper.
11. They used technical vocabulary, specific to their discipline, but simple enough to be understood by other people. For example, I am not an expert nor in Ethnobiology nor in Ethnomedicine, and I was able to understand the paper.
I cannot know what the authors where thinking about when they wrote this paper, but I would say that they could have had some of these criteria in mind:
- They thought about the reader. Their article should be readable, interesting, well explained, well organized and useful.
- They wanted that similar studies could be conducted following the same methodology.
This was not a discursive article, but a more scientific one. So there was a sequence of ideas in the sections that a standard article is written: introduction, objectives, methodology, results, discussion, and a conclusion. There was a smooth flow in the entire extension of the article.
Calvet-Mir, L., Reyes-García, V., & Tanner, S. (2008). Is there a divide between local medicinal knowledge and Western medicine? a case study among native Amazonians in Bolivia. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 4(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-4-18
Second article
I cannot give a proper summary of this article because I do not understand well what the authors wanted to do. I think that their objective is very vague.
This was one article that I revised as a peer reviewer and my final verdict was that it should not be published. So, when I had to choose one bad article for our blog, I checked on my previous evaluations of the articles to see if this article was published. And it was! Therefore, I prefer not to give much detail about it. It has some improvements, from the version I made the revision, but it is still too vague and not adding much to the discussion about suffering.
In this paper the authors said that they defined “a space for reflection on the meaning of suffering, its correlate in clinical practice and a fundamental argument when proposing legislation related to the end of life”.
I would ask:
- What is a space for reflection.
- The meaning of suffering is a very complex topic. Therefore, defining a space for reflection, which is very vague, for the meaning of suffering, is something too broad.
- The correlation with clinical practice is also very vague.
- The “fundamental argument when proposing legislation related to the end of life” is not clear.
The authors included quotes from participants of research, but they do not mention if participants signed any informed consent or if they had approval from any research ethical committee.
Finally, the conclusion is very vague.
They just wrote that it was part of a PhD thesis, but I think that there is a lack of rigor of the journal for having accepted this article.
On the other hand, as reflection about suffering, it is a good one, I think. Then maybe I ask myself, if this journal publish scientific papers or good reflections about a particular topic or both.
At this point, I raise the question of how many published articles are actually read in full. Academia is too focused on citations to evaluate researchers. This article may be cited many times because it has a very interesting quote, or one sentence might be very interesting and have many citations, but the paper itself does not add anything new and is not very well written. So I think our way of measuring the quality of researchers is flawed. We can just write papers with a few interesting sentences and reflections that might be widely quoted, but from an article that goes nowhere.