Critque News Article Using Statistics

Critique News Article Using Statistics
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Introduction
In an article titled Researchers Uncover How Halloween Caramel Apples Develop Listeria, Gillian Mohney describes how these bacteria could have developed in a delicacy that was not known to possess the conditions necessary for the growth of Listeria. In this article, the author uses examples of experiments carried out by certain institutes that validated the possibility of growth of the harmful bacteria in caramel apples.
The purpose of this paper is to prove the relationship between a serious infection known as Listeria and a favourite Halloween treat based on an outbreak that led to mass infection and death. According to data available in the article written by Gillian, this paper intends to extrapolate how true this new event was. The goal of this article is basically to prove that caramel apples can indeed harbour Listerine bacteria despite beliefs that apples didn’t possess conditions that could encourage the growth of Listeria monocytogenes.
The research question in this article is; did caramel apples cause a Listeria infection in a certain population leading to death in some cases? According to the article there are certain hypotheses that can be formulated. The first hypothesis is that caramel apples, contrary to popular belief, can harbour the Listerine bacterium. Another hypothesis is that caramel apples infected with Listeria were the main cause for the deadly 2014 Listeria outbreak. Another hypothesis that can be deduced from Gillian’s article is that the Listeria bacteria cannot increase in a caramel apple unless certain external conditions are manipulated either knowingly or unknowingly (Gillian, 2015).
In order to prove the accuracy of these hypotheses, research was carried out by a team from an academic institution and a food research institute. The design of the research was purely experimental. Since the effects of Listeria in humans are known to be fatal, there were no human test subjects. The main tools of experiment were caramel apples and the bacteria in question. In this experiment, there were various variables that were supposed to present different results of the experiment. The first variable which was vital for the experiment was the apples. The other variables were the Listeria and caramel. Other variables that were used to create an environment on the research topic were temperature, time, tongs and sticks.
During this research, the dependent variables were the apples, the caramel and the Listeria bacteria. The reasons why these variables can be referred to as dependent is that they didn’t change in number or in concentration. Apples remained the same just as the caramel did and there were no alterations made to them throughout the experiment. Independent variables were temperature and time. These variables changed throughout the experiment to give different results. In the case of temperature, it is seen to change and ranges between 44.6 and 77 degrees. Time is also manipulated in the experiment as the apples were stored for four to six weeks. It is evident that there is a change in time and temperature which makes them independent variables since they affect the depen...