Agreed, a good essay it may have been, but it isn't the assignment. Don't know what grade the student was in, but if she isn't in college yet she's gonna be in for a rude awakening. Most college professors I've had have been cool, but none would have allowed this not even in high school or elementary.

I highly doubt that the assignment had anything to do with assessing the chosen article's validity. Even though it was 99.998% likely that the article was a hoax, it sounds like she worked within the parameters of the assignment.

@44 You only get a zero for either non or late submission in most curriculums. Sourcing doesn't have weighting of 100% or else it wouldn't be a written assignment.

IT IS A PROPER RESOURCE, CHECK AFRICAN NEWSPAPERS

ok, so the parameters was to write about an article of science. ebola zombies is not science. pseudoscience does not count as science. just because you stick the word science after something does not mean it's science. science fiction is not science. I'm so done with people like you

@122 You don't understand what using a proper resource is do you. It is not just citing where you found the article. It is also making sure it is valid, the facts are real, the research used in the cited resource is proper (peer reviewed, etc, not based on anecdotes, or hype...at least not ever in science...actually, in anything). If any student wrote an essay using the Onion as their references for where they got their resources, they would fail. Or should, if they were using that as a serious reference for facts and news for a basis. Would you grant them a pass because they just used a resource? No matter where it came from? That is low and shoddy standards.

if you wouldn't grant a pass for using a good resource then you can't grant a fail for using one that East's well chosen

In what way is this teacher a "lazy dick?" The student clearly didn't follow the instructions

@58 Don't sweat it, judging by the comments made most of these people probably never made it through high school. Those who did probably went to state college. Typical drones who are quick to turn down ideologies which doesn't fit with what they believe.

The criteria is for the article to be about science (ebola zombies falls under pseudoscience or non science, which aren't sciences), not whether the article can provide statistically significant data. Although, if something is to be science, it would probably have to pass those requirements. the converse is not true though, so your example is invalid. Any experiment could satisfy the chi square test or the n > 30 theorem, but it doesn't mean it's science.

Awesome comeback to the blatant stupid preceding

How do you know she didn't specify that? There's a word limit she can't exactly lay out her whole lesson plan for us.

related to science means exactly that. pseudoscience is not science regardless of the science attached to the end. OPs instructions were crystal clear