Writing assignment #2: Primary and Review Articles

John Paul Cross

Genetics, Dr. Rinehart-Kim

            One could argue the importance of primary articles could not be overstated, and that they serve as the back upon which the vast majority of modern scientific studies build upon. Primary articles are documents that report the findings of a single study in factual scientific terms. These articles typically contain an Abstract summarizing the entire study in a digestible format, an introduction prefacing the reader on the focus of the study as well as any relevant background information, most importantly the study procedures including specific methods and experimental results, and the conclusions drawn from said procedures and results. They are usually printed in reputable scientific journals which contain many primary articles, usually all pertaining to a specific field.

            Review articles, on the other hand, do not merely summarize a single study. Review articles take pre-existing information, analyze it, and attempt to link or relate it to the primary article being analyzed, with the goal of synthesizing a general interconnected thesis from said information. These articles benefit from being more streamlined and readable by omitting some of the more verbose jargon required to fully elaborate on a single study and limiting the content to only relevant procedures and results.

            However, not all articles make it into scientific journals. In order to be presented in a reputable publication, an article must be subject to rigorous peer review. A peer review is a thorough process through which established experts in the field pertaining to the article examine, critique and suggest improvements for an article, often requiring several rounds of revisions, additions, and subtractions from the article. At the end of this extreme process, the article is approved and subsequently published in a scientific journal.

One prime example of a primary article would be the study performed by Dr. Shin and the research team sponsored by Massachusetts General Hospital, in which CRISPR/ Cas9 was used to inactivate a gene responsible for causing Huntington’s disease. The article covers a single study while possessing all of the conventional hallmarks of a standard primary article, such as displaying the methods through which the researchers isolated and deactivated the genes responsible for causing Huntington’s disease, and the results of inactivating said genes. A perfect example of a review article, on the other hand, would be the paper written by Maria Jimenez-Sanchez and others on Huntington’s disease. The article cites many sources to build an overall view of the disease, its nature, and potential cures for it. The article does not present any new study information, but uses many preexisting articles to synthesize its thesis, using only essential information and omitting material that would detract from the paper’s intended goal of distilling many complicated concepts into a single easily consumed summary.

            Primary articles and review articles are essential for expanding the scientific community’s knowledge on an aspect of a given field, as well as spreading information effectively and broadening comprehension of complex topics through concise review, with the peer review process ensuring these two types of publications are reputable and contain valid worthwhile information while adhering to scientific standards. Without these two types of articles, scientific literacy and spread of information and ideas within the scientific community would be vastly limited and would stunt societal improvement by extent.