3.18 Self-teaching questions (1-4)


The following questions should help you to revise the points of the Lesson Three e-lecture.

QUESTION 1:
A company announces a new herbal product will, they say, cure an important disease. All the claims and all the evidence come from the company. What is your first question for the following interviewees?
  1. The company spokesperson
  2. Someone suffering from the illness
  3. A World Health Organisation representative
  4. A local doctor
QUESTION 2:
While speaking to a representative of a science institution or ministry in a face-to-face interview, he or she says: "That question is not important. I'm not going to answer that question." How should you respond?
  1. "Are you avoiding the question?"
  2. "I can't force you to answer the question, but it does rather make you look as if you are dodging the issue."
  3. You don't respond at all, you simply go on to the next question.
  4. You repeat the question.
  5. You avoid a confrontation but lay a complaint later with the interviewee's boss.
QUESTION 3:
There is an outbreak of bird flu in your region. A journalist has interviewed the following people, asking each person one question. Why is each one a bad question for that particular interview?
  1. A subsistence-level chicken farmer, a grandmother operating in the informal economy; "Do you know how H5N1 works?"
  2. A state veterinarian in charge of monitoring the country's biggest chicken market; "Why haven't you done more to fight bird flu?"
  3. A bird life campaigner who says bird flu doesn't really exist but is a plot by the CIA and western intelligence agencies to destroy the indigenous economy; "Describe this plot by the CIA to make us believe in bird flu."
  4. The owner of a large company owning many chicken farms as well as the distribution network which gets the poultry into the supermarkets; "Is the government doing enough to protect your chickens?"
  5. A representative of the medical company marketing some of the drugs for avian influenza; "Is the government buying enough drugs from you?"
A local epidemiologist; "Can you tell me how many fatalities there have been in absolute terms and as a percentage of the chicken population, and then compare the situation with last year?"

QUESTION 4:
Powerful people can be intimidating to interview. But they are often quite accustomed to being asked questions, so sometimes the biggest obstacle is your own attitude. Write down your main question as if you have been given a five-minute interview with the following people:
  1. Nobel Peace Prize winner and first democratic president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, on HIV/AIDS.
  2. Your own government's prime minister or president, after the news breaks that his or her son is HIV positive.
  3. The secretary-general of the United Nations on climate change.
  4. The governor of the World Bank on the need to fund scientific research and development.
  5. A quantum physics professor who's just been told that she's won this year's Nobel prize.



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