Reflection

 For the assignment of  The New York Times and scholarly articles students had to report on the way these types of articles are written and make further connections on whether they are directed for a general audience or a scholarly audience. The ways authors write their papers range from if it follows the IMRAD format? Does it use basic vocabulary? Or does it apply visuals?. From this Assignment I learnt skills that now and later will be helpful when it comes to analyzing certain texts. The first skill that I enhanced through this assignment was my strategies for revising a paper; reading, drafting, and editing of articles. An example of this is the scholarly article which is long but only by revising how is written can tell many things to the reader, The other skill that I improved through this assignment is to engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond because of how students were supposed to analyze the genre of writing for a general audience paper that are the New York Times articles. 

  Reporting on the scholarly article Heritability of Intrinsic Human life span is about 50% when confounding factors are addressed

  January 29,2026, the scholarly article “Heritability of Intrinsic Human life span is about 50% when confounding factors are addressed” was released by Ben Shenhar et al. who conducted research on the topics of genetic heritability, longevity genes and aging mechanisms following the IMRAD format for other scholars in the field of study. This scholarly article is proper for other scholars because it follows the IMRAD format, uses active voice, relies on previous studies and uses vivid representation of data through graphs.

  Throughout the introduction for this scholarly article the authors use an active voice. An example of the author using the passive voice is this discrepancy motivated us to explore possible biases and confounding factors that could underestimate heritability of human life span across studies”. The active voice is present when the author uses “us”. The active voice in this scholarly article is used to recognize the researchers and their actions, not the experiment. In addition, the Introduction also cites previous studies explaining their results to give a foundation on the topics of research. An example of this is “Previous studies have estimated the heritability of life span in various populations with results ranging from 15 to 33%(7-14), with a typical range of 20 to 25%”(Shenhar et al. 2026). The previous studies help scholars understand the foundation and limitations that this study about genetics has and the citations make it so the scholar knows where the information came from and by who. The active voice and the previous studies in the introduction make it clear that the information is direct, cohesive and easy to understand for scholars in the field.

  In the methods section the active voice is also included throughout the section. This is exemplified in parts where Shenhar et al (2026) use sentences like  “we explore” , “We tested our conclusions” and “We also analyzed”. The active voice is seen with the usage of “we” or “our”. The methods section uses this type of terms while also explaining the process of the experiment and how the researchers expect to get results in a very detailed way. This section is the shortest in this scholarly article because it is only one paragraph. Based on Penrose & Katz(2010) the methods section should be detailed correctly because the methods section is important for the overall argument of a research report because it provides the framework within which the study’s results and conclusion were generated. The methods section explains how the experiment is going to be carried out in sentences like “we tested our conclusions on data from three different twin studies. Including the SATSA (Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging) study (22)”( Shenhar et al. 2026). This line is an example of how in the methods section the procedures are explained. The methods sections, even though it is the smallest section, keeps full details needed for the expected results.

   The results section is the longest section. This section includes vivid and different types of graphs to show rates of extrinsic and intrinsic mortality. Based on Penrose and Katz(2010) in the result section the data is summarized and instead of raw data is used conversion to averages to keep all the data shown while making it a manageable size. By making the raw data into graphs showing all results in a more direct way. Throughout the results is used really advanced mathematical and scientific vocabulary which can be easily understood by scholars but not by a general audience. These results and data tables allow for further discussion of results by other scholars as well. This section also points directly to the supplementary text that contains an extended analysis of the summarized data. After this section is followed by the discussion of the results, acknowledgments and references completing the IMRAD format to facilitate other scholars to read this article.

Overall the article by Ben Shenhar et al(2026) fits for a scholarly article because it follows the IMRAD format, sometimes uses an active voice, uses previous studies and includes vivid visuals to represent raw data. Shenhar et al(2026) is an attribution for the research on genes and longevity and can be used as citations and foundation for other researchers in this specific field.

   References 

Shenhar BE, Pridam GL, De olivera TH, Raz NA, Yang YI,  Deelen JO, Hägg SA, Alon UR.

Heritability of Intrinsic Human life span is about 50% when confounding factors are addressed. Hum Gen. 2026 Jan 29 [accessed 2026 Feb]

https://www-science-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/doi/10.1126/science.adz1187

Penrose AM, Katz SB. Writing in the Sciences: Exploring Conventions of Scientific Discourse. New York: Pearson Longman:2010.