PB2A: SCIgen vs. Scholarly Journal

              Justine Alford’s “Beer Compound Could Protect Brain Cells From Damage” on IFLScience caught my attention early this morning. After reading through the article, I wanted to do some real research on this topic by searching through UCSB’s library database for the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, where the study was published. Sadly, there was no search results that matched, but luckily, IFLScience had a hyperlink to the journal’s study. This article was composed of conventions present in a scholarly research publication. In comparison to the previously explored computer science research papers generated by SCIgen, both has prominent similarities and differences in its conventions which influences the rhetorical features of the research paper.

              Upon reading the title, “Xanthohumol, a Poluphenol Chalcone Present in Hops,Activating Nrf2 Enzymes to Confer Protection against Oxidative Damage in PC12,” the intended audience of this research paper can already be determined—doctors, scientists, and researchers in the medical field. The paper then proceeds to the abstract which clearly summarizes the contents of the whole article and introduces the experiment that was done to determine if Xanthohumol, a compound found in beer, may impede the progression of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. The next subsections of the research article—Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Associated Content, Aurthor Information, Acknowledgements, and References—are all conventions of a research paper. Having graphs and diagrams representing the data collected from the experiment, accompanied with captions explain them, makes the article visually more appealing and helps the readers understand the results of the experiment much easier.

            In the randomly generated paper by SCIgen called “On the Simulation of SCSI Disks,” the intended audience would be computer science researchers and computer engineers. The article is then shortly summarized by the abstract; it then moves onto the Introduction, Related Work, Principles, Implementation, Results, Conclusion, and References. The articles contains diagrams and graphs with captions as well. Despite the articles generated by SCIgen are composed with false data, the rhetoric devices and conventions of a stereotypical research paper can be found.

            Both articles are tailored to a specific audience, which in both cases are specifically researchers in the field of the subject of interest. Another similarity would be the vocabulary used; a reader that may not be studying the field extensively like researchers and scientists may find the articles hard to comprehend. For example, in the actual scholarly publication, many readers may not fully understand what “PC12 cells were seeded at a density of 1 × 104

cells/well in 96-well plates for 24 h followed by incubation with Xn or other agents for 24 h at 37 °C in a final volume of 100 μL” means unless they had been in a lab setting and performed experiments. Also, without a chemistry or physics background, abbreviations used may not be common knowledge to readers, such as μL, which means microliters.

            The main difference that stood out would be the tone of the articles. SCIgen’s article/s seem more informal in comparison to the research paper by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemsitry. In SCIgen’s article, it was mentioned that experimental data was provided in “gory detail,” which is not usually stated in a research paper. Stereotypically, research papers are formal and is written with vocabulary that is considered professional to the field. However, because of the less formal tone of SCIgen’s research papers, readers will take the research less seriously.

While the entry by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry may be more formal and supported by legitimate experimental data, both articles’ purpose is to relay to the readers whether the hypothesis meant to be proven through experimental data retrieved is correct or incorrect. Conventions of a typical research paper can be found in both the scholarly research publication and the randomly generated computer science research paper and its rhetorical features have the same purpose—prove to the readers whether the scientific hypothesis made is accurate or flawed.