A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist sometimes edited papers at the Santa Fe Institute and a couple of biologist, one theoretical and one evolutionary, offer some recollections of his approach, including
Inject questions and less-formal language to break up tone and maintain a friendly feeling. Colloquial expressions can be good for this, but they shouldn’t be too narrowly tied to a region. Similarly, use a personal tone because it can help to engage a reader. Impersonal, passive text doesn’t fool anyone into thinking you’re being objective: “Earth is the centre of this Solar System” isn’t any more objective or factual than “We are at the centre of our Solar System.”
Van Savage and Pamela Yeh, “Novelist ’s tips on how to write a great science paper” at Nature
It’s not clear how many science editors would go for the level of readability he urges scientists to strive for.
It’s mostly the acronyms in scientific papers that drive me nuts.
The rule is that you define the acronym once at the first of the article but never again. Once is just not enough. Particularly when there are several in the paper.
Most of this stuff is so arcane that unless you’re in the field you have no idea what the acronyms stand for nor can you remember them. How hard can it be to define them a couple of times.
I was recently asked to review a manuscript for a Springer journal and I had to reject it because it was so poorly written. To be fair to the author, I suspect this was because English wasn’t his first language. I think all scientists, myself included, could benefit from editing by someone who really knows how to write.
As a science editor, my estimate would be “almost all of us”. Readability makes our jobs so much easier.
Ed George:
You could benefit by learning about science.
ET
”Monopolizing conversations? Feelings of entitlement? Inability to admit error? Belittling others? These are all classic signs of narcissistic personality disorder.”
(I write courseware, so I have a dog in this fight. )
There’s an essential difference between writing for the public and writing for tenure. Papers written for tenure are not meant to be read, and are generally only comprehensible to a dozen other people in a subdiscipline. They don’t need editing because they are just markers in a competition, like runs in a baseball game. Articles intended to spread news and propaganda to the taxpaying public need to be written more like novels, and most of them already are. SciAm and New Scientist and websites like RCS and Eurekalert do a good job of editing.
So the advice is good, but it’s unnecessary for one type of paper and already heeded by the other type.
Polistra
Researchers try to write papers that are easily and widely understood. Tenure is not based on number of publications, it is based on the number of other scientists who cite your papers in theirs. The problem is not desire, it is that most researchers simply aren’t good writers.
And when it comes to evolutionism researchers aren’t even good at science.
That describes Ed George/ Acartia bogart/ William spearshake, to a T
A novelist has helped blind watchmaker evolution gain its status. That is all BWE is- a glossy narrative devoid of science.
Polistra – I agree that there’s an essential difference in writing for public and academics. But in both cases they are written to be read. I think the problem has been that academics aren’t trained in good communication, and resort to language that they think is appropriate to show that they know what they are doing. Many don’t think about writing a paper as trying to communicate clearly to other people. This might be changing: there certainly seems to be more talk of writing clearly, but only time will tell.
Bob O’H:
What? The ability to properly communicate is exactly what people expect from academics.