Article: “The Nose Needed for This Coronavirus Test Isn’t Yours. It’s a Dog’s.” by Elian Peltier
Peltier writes about dogs in Finland that were trained to sniff out COVID-19 in arriving passengers at Helsinki airport. The tests are voluntary and are according to researchers not only faster but also cheaper and more effective. Several other countries including the US, France, and Germany have followed suit and conducted research on whether dogs can detect the virus by scent.
Peltier starts with a good lead covering the who, what, where, and how questions. The why and when is then answered in the first few paragraphs. Most of the time the author mentions specific sources (e.g. Hielm-Bjorkman from the University of Helsinki) but there are two or three times where he just attributes the information to non-specific “researchers”. To me, it would be important to mention which researchers those were. For quotes, he uses “said” which is good. I’m not sure if he got the information out of a public statement or a personal interview but I think he got all the important information he needed.
Good comment, Emily. I heard some of this story onNPR this morning.
It’s possible the “researchers” are sometimes the same person, the
group in Finland. In other cases the writer uses researchers more
generically to refer to those at other sites, countries. Sort of a
shorthand, I suppose. There are links if you wanted to know
specific names.