Scholarly Publications and Its Credibility

            Previously, I took a look through the different examples of genre generators that were available on the internet. There was the SCIgen, the comic generator and a meme generator. This time, I plan to put the SCIgen to the test and compare it with an actual scholarly academic publication.

            Personally, I aspire to be a part of the medical field someday, so I decided to find an article that tickled my interests. As a possible immunologist, I am really interested in immunology. Immunology is the study of the immune system and this field can span from dealing with allergies to finding a cure or an inhibitor to slow down the process of a particular disease. With constant changes and discoveries within this field, I am confident that immunology is a field that will always require research.

            The article I selected is from a nonprofit organization, PLOS, which publishes scientific and medical journals. The name of the article is, “Superior Control of HIV-1Replication by CD8+ T Cells Targeting Conserved Epitopes: Implications for HIVVaccine Design.” This particular article discussed how T Cells – cells that mediate adaptive immunity – can be used as a base for a possible vaccine against HIV and how they should start focusing on figuring out how to make it responsive to the various epitopes – the specific detectors of pathogens; each specific to a certain pathogen – of the HIV-1 virus.  

 On the SCIgen website, I was able to generate an article titled, “Analyzing a* Search and the Memory Bus.” To be quite honest, the title does not make any sense at all. As analyzed prior to this blog entry, the context of the generated article does not make any sense at all. Even though the article contains eloquent words, they do not mean anything significant. It has the appearance of an official article, but this does not even compare to the article I was able to find.

            When I compare these two very different articles, there are certain structural qualities that they tend to share. To begin with, there is the matter of format. The two articles have a certain style; pattern to its entry. Both had a title, an abstract, an introduction, methods to an experiment, a graphical and/or numerical data, an analysis, a conclusion and a list of references. In addition, the two had a professional tone to its work. SCIgen, is not a good example of a scholarly publication for the fact that it is just a piece with a bunch of big and fancy words put together, but it did perceive a tone of an authentic article.

            There are many reasons why SCIgen is far from a scholarly article. For an “article,” in general, there is not a lot of details. In order for a publication to earn its noteworthy quality, it has to give a thorough explanation. By the simple looks of SCIgen, it does not seem like the work can be “trusted.” In the article I have chosen, there are pages and pages of explain in depth about their findings in their particular experiments. Additionally, I feel that PLOS article had more credibility due to the numerous references they cited. This signifies that they are not the first ones looking into this particular topic. The main difference between the two is that one is simply generated through a select combination of words in different places, while the other is thoroughly peer reviewed by their fellow colleagues. Anyone can scramble up some kind of essay or research paper about anything, but the work will not mean anything unless others of the same profession feel the same way or differently on the topic. While one may feel that they have put enough information, it is always a good idea to have others to check their work. This is because the reviewer may have some questions or some things to add upon what is there. With combined effort, the work can only get better and polished to its full potential.  

            Overall, I thought that the article I chose was intriguing. Not only was this topic interesting for me, but being able to recognize the familiar terminologies, due to the recent courses I have taken, has made me feel excited in a nerdy way. It was as if my brain was saying, “Hey, I know this!” I do realize and sympathize on how difficult it is to find a generic way to target pathogens. For them to have been able to progress or to have found results, where this is possible, has only made me enthusiastic for the future of immunology. One day, I only hope to contribute through research and maybe even publish articles of my own!