You do not need to summarize the study, though I encourage you to briefly state the main research question and write enough about the data and/or results for the reader to understand your critique. Keep any explanation of the data or methods clear and concise so that you can focus primarily on the critique.
Suggestions for identifying something to critique:
1. Evaluate the experimental methods. For example, did the authors really test what they said they intended to test? Are there flaws in the experimental design? Did they include the appropriate control groups? Did they have the proper controls for their experimental conditions? Make sure you elaborate on these comments and describe the problem and how it impacts their results and how they can be interpreted. Provide suggestions for a better approach and say why. State what new information you think they would have found if they had used a different approach.
2. Do the conclusions follow from the results or are there other interpretations that the authors did not consider? Be specific and suggest an experiment (or two) that could properly test that alternative explanation.
3. Discuss the limitations of the study or methods. Especially focus on any limitation that they did not mention themselves (comments about sample size need to be made with reference to the field – if authors are tackling a rare disorder, larger sample sizes may simply be unfeasible). In addition, sample size comments also need to be justified in terms of how it impacts the study – do they actually need a larger sample size to answer their research question? All limitations raised need to be discussed with reference to the research question and the statistics/method used.
4. What are consequences and/or impact of the results in the “real world”? Do the authors overstate this importance? Or do they miss important impact they should have written/about? Make sure you can explain how the data/results of the study directly lead to impact in the world or in what way the authors have overstated the studies importance and state what else would need to be done to have real impact.
