Mary Chitty

Dr. Angela Miss

UWRT-1102

4 August 2017

Research Reflection-Mini Paper

I developed several strategies for finding helpful sources and information while working

on this project. During the beginning of my research I stumbled upon a news articles on my topic

that provided a wonderful overview of the North Carolina coal ash spill. Using this article, I

wrote down key terms, such as coal ash and hexavalent chromium, which I used to find academic

journals on the UNCC database. I found that if I wanted in depth scientific studies to either prove

or disprove a statement, the UNCC database was very helpful. However, some academic journals

were too specific. Google proved to be helpful when I needed quick, summarized versions of an

academic journal. These synopses helped to break down information that scientific journals did

not. The downside to using google for information was that I had to consistently check the author

and websites credibility. Website articles also had a tendency to develop more biased article

than journals found off of the database.

Finding information supporting Duke Energy was rather difficult. The only source I

found that might give me some leads came from an article that talked about Duke Energys legal

battles. The author mentioned the power company used a study conducted by Duke University

that concluded a certain harmful chemical that was detected in groundwater did not arise from

coal ash, but rather occurred naturally. I wanted more information, specifically the actual

academic study produced by Duke University. By knowing the university that conducted the
research and using some of key terms that related to the research study, I was able to find the

research study on the UNCC database. While searching for strong scientific studies that would

support the energy company, I found that there were some biased journals produced. For

instance, I found a research study that was funded by a plastics company and concluded that

petroleum based manufacturing had little environmental damage. I had read countless material

that went against this one study. I tossed this petroleum study out of my sources because I

inferred that its accuracy was low.

I still have many things to work on and learn when researching for a particular topic. I am

extremely slow at finding sources because I cannot seem to sim or pick out major topics. While

working on my annotated bibliography I quickly found that this was a major flaw. After working

for a whole day searching for good sources, I would have only gone through a handful of

journals and articles. If this course was the length of a regular semester, I may have been able to

work at a snails pace, but unfortunately the pace of this class is fast. In my next research paper, I

think I will try to focus on only reading abstracts of academic articles and remembering to only

skim news and online articles.