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Scholarly Articles

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Comparison of Scholarly and Popular Science Articles
In general terms, there are two types of people in terms of scientific competence. To appeal to each type of person, there are similarly two types of scientific writing. For the well-educated scientist, there are scholarly scientific articles which follow a specific form and give immense amounts of information about a specific study executed by other scholars. These types of articles can be used as references in other scholarly articles, and can be used as the basis for the other type of scientific writing: popular science. The majority of people who are interested in scientific study would struggle to comprehend scholarly articles and would prefer not to take the time out of their day to …show more content…

Both pop science and scholarly articles use logos heavily to get their point across, but they use it in different ways. Scholarly articles must be more straightforward with the data they deliver, and are only allowed to analyze their data in the discussion and conclusion sections. Even in these sections, scholars tend to “hedge” their conclusions; they are reluctant to make solid conclusions that their findings are final or confirmed because if they make a confident conclusion which turns out to be incorrect, this will hurt their ethos in the scientific community. In the scholarly article, they lay out potential limitations and drawbacks of their study: “A possible limitation of the current study is the use of a two-dimensional technique” (Bio 271). By doing this, they admit that their study is not perfect but then often explain why this limitation should not hurt their results. They also usually include a section in the conclusion which tells of future research that can be done to further explore and learn about this topic. This follows the same line of thought as the limitation section does which maintains the scholar’s ethos. In contrast, the popular article makes bold claims using data found in scholarly articles to make the reader believe this information is important to them. In the popular science article, the authors says “cushioned sneaker heels have allowed runners to change their stride to high-impact running, and likely open up a whole world of pain involving foot and leg injuries” (Hsu). By using the wording “...sneaker heels have allowed…” the author makes a claim as if it was certain and guaranteed in the study, which it was not. The scholarly article says “...results of the current study could be interpreted…” showing their reluctance to make conclusions unless their hypothesis is

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