After reading the 1971 New York Times article, I immediately noticed some differences in writing style when compared to similar scientific articles published today. Overall, this article was much more process-oriented, offering relevant details to support the claims outlined in the scientific study. The author tells the story and process of the scientific innovation, presenting findings in the order that they were discovered. In particular, the author devotes paragraphs of the text to state the credentials of particular researchers. For instance, the end of the first page contains a section discussing the history of prostaglandin research, which names specific studies and their findings. The section gives context to the current study and I found it interesting that the author gives the location and names of those involved in previous studies. I speculate that this was done to justify the credibility of those who contributed to the outlined research, as few people would have been able to verify that on their own. Information was not as readily available in the 1970s, and readers would likely have had to make several calls to verify the work of researchers named in the article. However, an article in today’s newspaper may have contained links/references to these previous studies – so that readers could conduct their own background checks.

I also believe that while the article does a great job of explaining the scientific innovation outlined in the research study, something like this would never be published in today’s New York Times. This is largely due to major changes in the way we receive and interpret information in today’s world. More so than ever, it has become important to condense information and deliver key points in as few words as possible, and information now moves quicker than ever before. This is directly reflected by the aforementioned differences between the two articles, and readers must now conduct their own due diligence if they wish to learn more about the process of scientific research and verify the credibility of the publisher/author of a scientific study. Unfortunately, this opens the door for more inaccurate reporting and falsified information to leak into popular media, which our Hot Topic presentations helped us identify.

Thus, this article presents a great amount of valuable scientific information and background of those involved in the scientific study, but only because readers would not have had the resources to find that information on their own.