Popular Press Vs Research Paper

Words: 911
Pages: 4

It began with a madeleine and a sigh. The Proust phenomenon originated in the form of a novel by French artist Marcel Proust, in which a narrator dunks a madeleine cookie into a cup of tea and is then flooded with memories from his childhood for the rest of the story. Most people have experienced this phenomenon, a Christmas candle bringing back the memories of the years past, a perfume bringing back memories of a particular person. Though many can attest to this, there has been no solid research proving it works better than all the other senses. Information regarding the scientific findings vary significantly with the type of study, and also the type of article. Scientific articles and popular press articles are shockingly different even at …show more content…
Detailed, reliable information is a very important component. Aspects of both of these are easily noticed, like the amount of citations and the length of the paper, but what is in an academic article as far as information that is missed in the popular press? For one, the academic article is about a research study, so instead of just reading the information as a claim and accepting it as truth, the audience is seeing directly where that information comes from, and what is there to support it. Collins explains in the popular press article “Smells can trigger emotional Memories, study finds”, it states that odor brings back more emotional memories than sound, however it fails to include visual stimuli, and and how it proved more effective at bringing back memories more vividly (Toffolo, Smeets, and Van Den Hout). As noted in both articles, the findings do not prove the Proust phenomenon, only narrows it down a little. However, it is hard to understand the components of this fact without more detail. Honest unbiased information is harder to get when only part of the story is given. The academic article spends time wading through this theory and exploring alternative explanations for the findings, such as music, which was once an arguable contender to the Proust theory in evoking intense emotional memories. In the popular press article, the writer chooses what information to give and what needs to be taken out in order to be concise. This may make perfect sense to the author, but a lot of the variables involved are lost, like the fact that only women were tested because of the differences in the sense of smell between males and females. While the popular press article does touch on the fact only women were used, it still gives the general feeling that the findings are relatable to both men and woman, and does not give the background