To be honest, I was a little bit confused about the article for a number of reasons that I’ll explain below:

First, I wanted to get some context to the article by doing a bit of research on the writer. Lawrence Galton. After putting his name into Google, I realized that the top links were all links to Amazon books written by him. However, I could not find a comprehensive biography of the author or anything else. He did write a number of books, including “You may not need a psychiatrist, How your body may control your mind”, “Medical Advances”, “Truth About Senility and how to Avoid it”, “Truth About Fibre in Your Food”, “1001 Health Tips”, etc. There is something to be said about someone who publishes a lot of books, but I find it odd that there isn’t any information about personal life or specific professional life on Galton in the form of a biography.

Another thing that came to my attention is how technical the article is. I’ve always known the New York Times as a paper that aims to appeal to the general audience, hence a simplified read, but the article written by Galton relied heavily on scientific jargon that I feel the general public would find hard to understand.  Perhaps this may be because of just how the New York Times has evolved throughout the years. This article was written in 1971, more than 40 years ago. Compared to the popular articles by New York Times article shared by classmates from the first assignment, this article is definitely a lot more heavy.

Another aspect of the article that stood out to me was the large drawing of the molecular structure by Walter Hortens. I agree with Robert that the drawing was not really necessary for understanding the article. The article really did not refer to the image to explain its points. However, it did lead me to think about the various reasons for the author to include it. Perhaps it gives the audience a sense of credibility towards the author?

Overall, I thought the article was interesting. There were just multiple parts throughout where I scratched my head.