PB2A

            Scholarly articles are the finished products of experts’ reviewed by other experts. They are reliable sources for academics who happen to be interested in studying a particular topic. Future studies will then depend on their research assuming that it is legitimate. For a field of study to be continuously legitimate, every study that supports is must be coherent as one broken link in a chain leaves the chain worthless. Experts have the responsibility of providing valid and trustworthy information, and to do so, they follow a set of conventions to preserve the credibility of the academic community. The article "Motion camouflage induced by zebra stripes" by Martin J. How, and Johannes M. Zanker represents how a scholarly article is written. The paper tries to answer the significance of zebras’ stripes. It suggests motion camouflage as the reason for zebras having stripes and tries to prove this by providing their methods and test results. In the process, the authors uses various rhetorical techniques to strengthen their claims.

            The paper starts with an abstract, giving the readers a quick idea of what the paper will be about. It starts by pointing out how important the subject is saying, “The functional significance of the zebra coat stripe pattern is one of the oldest questions in evolutionary biology, having troubled scientists ever since Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace first disagreed on the subject” (How). If Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace fought over the subject, then the subject must be worth caring about. On the side of the abstract is a list of keywords, appearing like how it would in a science textbook. The keywords listed (Camouflage, Illusory motion, Aliasing, Aperture effect, and Equus burchelli) center the thought to the main topic of the paper: motion camouflage by zebra stripes. Both the list of keywords and abstract provide the main ideas of the paper, telling the readers which aspects to focus on.

            The introduction comes afterwards, bringing up the argument of zebra stripes as an evolutionary protection against insects and mammalian predators. It states that this argument has received the most attention among other theories of the stripes’ functions, noting again how major the theory is even among the scientific community. Reading the online pdf of the article allows the reader to clearly see the citations as they are colored in light blue, and to easily tell that the introduction is covered in citations. This means that a good amount of information from sources were used. Because it is the introduction, background information would be given to give the readers a smooth transition to the experiments conducted. It would be easier to understand the what, why, and how questions pertaining to the experiment and readers would not be left in the dark.

            The article then carries on to explain the experiment’s procedures. Basically, the researchers created a simulation of how mammalian predators or insects might see the zebras using two types of optical illusions: wagon-wheel effect and barber-pole illusion. A lot of scientific terms were used so a reader not proficient in the field may not easily comprehend the article. The results of the experiment were presented after, showing pictures of how the zebras were seen in the simulation and graphs showing some other scientific stuff. This actually reminds me of SCIgen, the computer science paper generator and how they share a similar format. For all I know, the article could also be nonsense, since I cannot understand both the article and the CS papers. The graphs however make it look legitimate. Thankfully, a discussion section is generously provided for the people struggling to understand what’s going on. Unlike the section about the experiment and results, the introduction and the discussion provides a more qualitative explanation of the process. The numbers and data were left in the materials and methods, and the results sections.