Chapter Seven: “Writing the Research Review”

Capell, Teresa, Richard Twyman, Victoria Armario-Najera, Julian Ma, Paul Christou (2020). Potential Applications of Plant Biotechnology against SARS-CoV-2. Trends in Plant Science,Volume 25, ISSUE 7, P635-643, July 01, 2020.

Labelled “opinion” in this issue, this review summarizes—and argues for—plant applications for testing reagents and vaccine development in the COVID19 crisis. One colorful flow chart infographic. This review is directed at a broad audience of science-literate readers.

Hotez PJ (2016) Texas and Its Measles Epidemics. PLoS Med 13(10): e1002153. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002153

Research review that explains the dangers of the “anti-vaxxer” movement and recapitulates research that shows the lack of correlation between vaccines, in particular those against measles, and autism spectrum disorder. Also relevant to Chapter 4. A popular journalism essay based on the Hotez article was published in 2017 in the Texas Monthly, written by Laura Bell.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/scientist-stop-measles-texas/

Joyner, Michael J. et al. (22 authors)(2020). Evidence favouring the efficacy of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 therapy; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.29.20162917

Pre-printed in MedRxiv, 7/30/2020. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.29.20162917v1.full.pdf+html

Statistical review of findings in 11 studies, including clinical trials. Brief (7 pp.) Type A research review. Includes one table and one chart, plus twitter feeds and comments to the preprint.

See comment under Ch. 8 on Los Angeles Times article based on this research review

Wallingford, J. B. (2019). The 200-year effort to see the embryo. Science, 365 (6455), 758–759. doi: 10.1126/science.aaw7565 https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/23_august_2019/MobilePagedReplica.action

Chapter Seven of WSTFC uses an example from tomography in explaining the features of the research review. This research review, also from imaging technology, again exemplifies what I call the Type A form of the review. The review further illustrates the history of imaging (a topic in Chapter Three) in the representation of the embryo. Note also the informative timeline infographic (a topic in my Chapter Ten) on p. 759 of the article.