WP #2 Rough Draft

Marcus Dodge

Zack de Piero

Writing 2

 3 May 2015

Genetically Modified Organisms

Throughout history, the human population has increased.  One big problem with this growth has been being able to feed everybody.  Farmers from both past and present have had to increase yields without increasing costs too much.  On top of all this, farmers also have to conscious of the environment these days. In order to achieve all this, society has turned to Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMO’s.  GMO’s are crops such as corn or soy which have had their DNA altered in order to express desirable traits such as growing bigger or even developing resistance to certain types of pests.  This sudden increase in GMO’s has not been immune to considerable backlash though.  Companies such as Green Peace have launched campaigns against biotechnology companies such as Monsanto, and the discussion about the safety of GMO’s has turned into a much-publicized ordeal.  However, whether or not GMO’s are dangerous is not the subject of this paper.  Instead, this paper is focused on analyzing a few examples from the plethora of research that has been done on this controversial new technique.  Two scientific papers and one mainstream media article will be examined to show that each form of literature is equally important in delivering information to people in order to better understand GMO’s.

At first glance, it is apparent that the scholarly papers and the mainstream media article are structured very differently.  The scholarly papers have multiple titled sections.  Both scholarly papers have an introduction, conclusion, and references as well as information in the middle describing the research being carried out and results of that research.  They also both contain figures and graphs that help explain the results of the research.  All of this helps to present the advanced research being done clearly and efficiently.  However, the mainstream media article is quite different from the scholarly texts.  Overall, the media article is much more basic than the scholarly articles.  It is short and to the point.  It is structured in a sort of bullet point format in that it has five points that it concisely discusses.  The brevity of the article makes it easy to read and understand.

Something that is readily apparent when glancing at the articles is the different language that is used.  The scholarly articles use much more advanced language and terminology that is unique to the subject that they are discussing.  For example, one of the scholarly articles explains, “Immunoassay technologies with antibodies are ideal for qualitative and quantitative detection of many types of proteins in complex matrices when the target analyte is known.”  This type of language does not make much sense to everyday people, but to a biological scientist it is crystal clear.  The mainstream media article uses everyday language and assumes that the readers know just about nothing about GMO’s.

            All of the conventions and formatting of the articles discussed so far can be explained by the audience that they are intended for.  The two scholarly articles are intended for people already knowledgeable about GMO’s, while the mainstream media article is intended for everyday people.  The subjects of the articles can show this.  One of the scholarly articles is meant for biologists because it explains how to detect if certain foods are genetically modified or not.  This article uses jargon that is specific to the study of biology.  It also assumes that the people reading the article already know many of the techniques for sequencing DNA.  Due to both of theses reasons, the article would not make much sense to everyday people.  The other scholarly article is about the public’s perception on GMO’s and how it affects their buying habits.  The article is fairly straightforward until it uses complicated equations to try to model the economic impacts of GMO’s.  This wouldn’t be too hard to understand for economics, but yet again, everyday people would quickly get confused.  Finally, the mainstream media article is simply information about GMO’s.  Scientists already familiar with GMO’s would quickly get bored, but it is a great informational article for everyday people.

Even though the scholarly and mainstream media articles are quite different, they are equally useful in their own ways.  The scholarly articles provide evidence from gathered facts about GMO’s.  The biological article explains how to detect if foods are genetically modified in a way that only biologists could understand.  The article is useless to most people but it is very informative to a biologist.  The scholarly article about the economics is also useless to everyday people but it provides valuable information to economics.  The mainstream media article also has its own place.  It is a piece of valuable information to everyday consumers but not to scientists.  One might argue that since the mainstream media article has a much larger audience, it would be more useful.  This however, is not the case because without the scientific articles, the mainstream media article would have no information to back its claims.  The scientific articles also depend on the mainstream media article because the results of the research being conducted wouldn’t be relevant unless everyday people knew something about them.  The scientific articles also have value to a few other types of people and companies other than scientists.  For example, a food company or restaurant chain might want to know the publics perception of GMO’s to be able to decide whether or not they think that genetically modifying their product would be worthwhile.

            Overall, each article has its purpose in society.  The scholarly articles provide information to experts in their fields, while the mainstream media uses that information and presents it in a way more suitable for the public.