Last updated February 26th, 2020

The Scholarly Article Analysis essentially sought to analyze the writing style of the scholarly article that the NY Times article was based off of. Within my analysis, I chose an article that had to do with Mobile Stroke Units and the way they treated patients within NYC. I discussed how the article, though long, still managed to use an IMRAD format. The author managed to use both active and passive voice. I also discuss what seems to be the author’s hesitance to make definitive conclusions, likely because in scientific experimentation, there are very rarely proven facts. 

Kristina Qoku
Deeadra Brown
Writing for the Sciences ENGL 21003 26 Feb 2020

Effectiveness of Stroke Units
The scientific article “Geographic Analysis of Mobile Stroke Unit Treatment in a Dense Urban Area: The New York City METRONOME Registry” was published by the Journal of the American Heart Associationand written by Dr. Benjamin R. Kummer et al. on December, 17th, 2019. The article describes two studies conducted in Manhattan, New York, that were meant to assess the effectiveness of mobile stroke units in patient treatment when compared to general care units. Through the use of technical language, passive voice, hedging verbs, and various other writing techniques, Kummer et al. manage to embody a predominantly neutral tone within the article.

Though portions of the IMRAD format are included throughout the article, the format is not strictly followed. There are two experiments mentioned in the paper as opposed to one focal experiment. Each experiment includes some form of an introduction, methods, results and conclusion section. The first experiment opens with an abstract (Kummer et al. 2019), delving into whether mobile stroke units, or MSUs, benefit individuals in populated areas such as New York City. Patients from the Metropolitan New York Mobile Stroke registry were observed and evaluated, and it was concluded that patients who had access to MSUs received faster treatment times. The first experiment includes highly specific phrases (Kummer et al. 2019) that would require a certain level of scientific understanding, such as “substantially quicker time to thrombolysis” or “multivariable analysis”. This would imply that the target audience of the paper is a group that is expected to have some level of understanding of such terms, since definitions are not provided. Hedging verbs are included (Kummer et al. 2019) through claims that MSUs “may represent a potentially beneficial addition” or “could potentially reduce” the time required to receive thrombolysis treatment. The avoidance of making definitive conclusions may be due to a desire to remain as scientifically accurate as possible since prior research has not yet been conducted at this point in the introduction. When describing the methods and results, the authors (Kummer et al. 2019) gravitated towards active voice, but switched to passive voice once they reflected on their findings. The entire experimental section was written in past tense, seeing as the experiment was conducted at some point in the past. Due to the brief nature of the first experiment, there were no visual elements included to supplement the writing.

Compared to the first experiment, the second experiment contains different subheadings, introduces graphics, and is much lengthier. Subheadings (Kummer et al. 2019) such as Design, Patient Population, and Measurements were introduced. The second experiment sought to determine whether close proximity of hospitals within the city would deem the benefit of MSUs to be less significant. The introduction displays instances of passive voice (Kummer et al. 2019), claiming how “Manhattan is the most densely populated borough”. Present and future tense is maintained as the topic is introduced, and prospective results are discussed. The methods section, however, transitions into active voice and past tense (Kummer et al. 2019), with the authors claiming “[they] conducted a…cohort study” on patients predisposed to strokes. The Patient Population subheading (Kummer et al. 2019) describes the demographics of the patients and where their information was obtained. A map (Kummer et al. 2019) was included to supplement these findings, though the blurb describing the image contained much more descriptive and concise language as opposed to the rest of the section. The Measurements, Statistical Analysis, and Sensitivity Analysis subheadings all primarily display instances of passive voice in past tense. Non-hedging phrases (Kummer et al. 2019) such as “patients in the MSU group had significantly longer ambulance…arrival times” were used more frequently within the results and discussion sections. This is likely due to the inclusion of tables containing statistical data on MSUs as a source of support for such claims. It was concluded (Kummer et al. 2019) that based on the presented data, time to receive treatment was shorter for patients who had access to MSUs as opposed to those who received traditional ambulance services.

References

Kummer RB, Lerario PM, Hunter DM, Wu X, Efraim SE, Omran SS, Chen LM, Diaz LI,

Sacchetti D, Lekic T, et al. 2019. Geographic analysis of mobile stroke unit treatment in a dense urban area: the New York City metronome registry. Jour. of the Amer. Heart Assoc. 8(24):e013529.