In the dying Russians a problem surfaces that has confronted both political scientists and journalists for decades, the problem of not being able to provide a concrete answer to an interesting phenomenon. In hard sciences I feel as if there are fewer outlets/materials to pull from/smaller margin for the acceptance of pseudo answers just based on the facts and data at hand mixed with historical trends/interpretations.

I feel as if the conclusion drawn from what information was at hand was barely a quasi response to the question of why Russians are dying at alarming rates. in this case it seems like the question should be left unanswered and in a liminal space of active speculation.

Here we see a crossover of journalism and political science and I believe in this instance the intermingling was detrimental to it being a good piece of either. As a piece of political science the need to have catchy punchlines, the readiness to fill the unquestioned minds of millions of Russions, and need for memorable conclusions derailed the piece from being as judgemental, scrutinizing and thorough/scientific in its finding. Additionally as a peice of journalism, the piece fails to stay current and brings in too much background history and cultural analysis of previous time periods to be fitting in the pages of a frequent publication dealing with news.