PB2A - Rollin'

Margaret Wardle and Matthew Kirkpatrick’s scholarly piece “‘Ecstasy’ as a social drug: MDMA preferentially affects responses to emotional stimuli with social content” contains many factors that are important for the audience’s understanding of the work. One of the first conventions demonstrated in the article is the hypothesis that is weaved into the introduction. Their hypothesis that “MDMA would dose-dependently increase reactivity to positive emotional stimuli and dampen reactivity to negative stimuli, and that these effects would be most pronounced for pictures with people in them” is intended to peak the audience’s curiosity. The brief explanation of the experimenters’ hypothesis filters out the uninterested audience. Throughout the paper, the authors also incorporate many facts from other sources. The citations add credibility, or ethos, by showing that the idea is not just one person’s opinion. Other citations are just basic facts and definitions that help establish the foundation and basis of the paper. These references to other works are also important because it can set the formal tone of the situation. For instance, the jargon in this sentence, “brain imaging reveals similar modifications in neural responses to emotional expressions, with MDMA (1.5 mg/kg) increasing ventral striatum response to happy facial expressions and decreasing amygdala response to angry facial expressions (Bedi et al., 2009)” informs the reader about the background information of the paper. Similar to references from other sources, many statistics and concrete numbers are included in this scholarly article. The solid numbers are what makes the experiment an experiment, as it provides evidence and results. The charts and visuals that accompany the statistics is also another important convention that validates the research. Another aspect that is significant in this work is how the procedure is written in paragraph form instead of a numbered list. It is also important to note that the procedure is written in past tense. The reason is that this experiment is not a simple experiment that anyone can repeat, as it poses health risks on the participants. The past-tense paragraph form makes the procedure seem more like a fluid explanation of the series of events that occurred in the experiment, rather than a recipe that one could follow. Towards the end, the discussion section of the article also proves to be important. With minimal jargon, this section relates the research to real-world experiences by making comparisons to previous experiments. The discussion also mentions limitations within the experiment to ensure the audience does not feel as though the experimenters believe their conclusions and results are indefinitely accurate. These limitations act as a disclaimer. All of the aspects within these types of scholarly articles are intentionally placed and utilized to assist with the reader’s comprehension of the work.

When comparing legitimate articles such as Wardle and Kirkpatrick’s piece on the effect of ecstasy on human responses to meaningless articles generated on SCIgen, it becomes evident that there are certain features that are common throughout most scholarly works. The most obvious similarities are the subheadings—introduction, methods, results, conclusion, references, etc. Since there is typically a significant amount of length in the paper, the breakdown of all the content is vital for the sake of clarity and ease. The evidence in these papers are almost always backed up with visuals, graphs, or charts. These types of representation for the results can make an illegitimate article, such as the ones on SCIgen, seem authentic. One feature that articles from the SCIgen website do not contain is the relationship of the experiment to real-world examples. Since relating the research to something that is applicable in everyday life can be extensive and broad, it is more difficult for the SCIgen website to create default phrases that is relatable to the outside world. Comparing the research to reality can be considered to be analysis, and analysis is very unique and varies from topic to topic. In other words, it is difficult for computerized systems to provide relatable analysis, hence the lack of such analysis in SCIgen articles.