Cool earth, tiny rocks?

John Vally's article "A cool early Earth?" published in the magazine Scientific American is a good example of a popularized scientific report. I say popularized because although the paper does follow the standard arrangement of a scientific report, it uses simpler language fewer technical words. The technical words it does use it defines. Such as "ratio of oxygen 18 (18O, a rare isotope with eight protons and 10 neutrons....". In a scientific report published in a professional journal the explanation of what oxygen 18 is would be omitted because the author would assume his professional audience would already know this. Though this scientific report has been popularized it still remains a scientific report.
It does this by following the classic arrangement of a scientific paper. Vally starts with an introduction where he includes the conclusion his research may refute and why he started the research. The conclusion that he is going to refute is when exactly did the earth cool enough for live to begin. Then he tells us why he is refuting that evidence. It is mostly summed up in this paragraph and a half:

"But just how quickly did the surface of the earth cool after its luminous birth? Most scientists have assumed that the hellish environment lasted for as long as 500 million years, an era thus named the Hadean. Major support for this view comes from the apparent absence of any intact rocks older than four billion years--and from the first fossilized signs of life, which are much younger still.

In the past five years, however, geologists--including my group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison--have discovered dozens of ancient crystals of the mineral zircon with chemical compositions that are changing our thinking about the earth's beginnings. The unusual properties of these durable minerals--each the size of the period in this sentence--enable the crystals to preserve surprisingly robust clues about what the environment was like when they formed. These tiny time capsules bear evidence that oceans habitable to primitive life and perhaps continents could have appeared 400 million years earlier than generally thought."

He gives us the evidence for the Hadean period, which is the absence of rocks older than 4 billion years. Then he gives us his basis for refuting it. Or the finding of zircons with "unusual properties". These are usually the main components of a scientific introduction. A brief history of the idea that is generally accepted, and possible evidence of why we may have to change that idea.

The next part of the scientific paper is the "methods and materials" section. He starts this section with the title "Digging deep" where he goes on to explain how they dug up these zircons in Australia. He also explains the equipment used to gather the composition of the zircons. This being the "ion microprobe". With this discussed he then can move on to the next part of the scientific paper the Results.

His results section has the title "Evidence of Ancient Oceans". These where that the ion microprobe found that some of the zircons had a ratio of a certain ion of oxygen that would suggest the earth cooled much earlier. Back to the idea of being popularized scientific paper for a moment. The article has no charts or graphs showing the actual raw data as it would in a professional journal. Also it has voice as shown by this quote: "We were stunned.". Lab reports generally don't have much or any voice involved.
But they all do have a discussion section. Vally's discussion section is titled "continental clues" and continues through the rest of the paper. This part just looks at what this new information may mean for our understanding of how the earth was made and gives ideas for further study.

So I guess this shows that this paper is arranged a certain way but what makes it scientific is that the arrangement has a reason. It follow the idea of Baconian Induction. Or bottom up thinking... This paper takes all the little bits of evidence we have about the worlds beginning. This is the intro. Then it adds its little part and tells us how to do it. (Materials, Method and Results). Then it starts to apply the new information to the old information (discussion). This is all in a attempt to create an understanding of the world from all evidence we have or simply the practice of science.