Jean Fahnestock's Accommodating Science

Society, as a unit, has difficulty in knowing and understanding the rather abstract scientific subjects, and rely on those who take the challenge in transforming it into a popular manner. The sophisticated science reports use a variety of vocabulary unknown to the majority of the populations. Scientific terms and other writing structures specialized in the description of scientific reports make it difficult to understand for beginning scholars who do not have a sufficient amount of background information in the realms of sciences, so what changes in word structure occur to assist them? Journalists take the challenge to alter the original scientific report and accommodate the scholarly piece for lay readers to better understand the significance of the report without any trouble. In Jean Fahnestock’s article “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts” she describes accommodation as “when a scholarly source becomes popularized” (Fahnestock, 333). …show more content…
These needs play a crucial role on how the audience interpret the information and what they obtain from it. Scientific articles differ from their accommodated versions as they use jargon, statement types, and depth of information because of the knowledge difference amongst the audience. By looking at the original scientific report “Demonstration of Protein-Based Human Identification Using the Hair Shaft Proteome” written by Parker et. al. and its accommodated version “Proteins In Your Hair Could Uniquely Identify You At A Crime Scene” written by Knvul Sheikh, a science writer with three years of experience, we can analyze the changes in both reports and fathom why each author wrote in a specific writing