I didn’t know whether to take
my Ph.D. adviser’s remark as a compliment. “You don’t write like a
scientist,” he said, handing me back the progress report for a grant
that I had written for him. In my dream world, tears would have come to
his eyes, and he would have squealed, “You write like a poet!”
In reality, though, he just frowned. He had meant it as a criticism. I don’t write like a scientist, and apparently that’s bad.
I asked for an example, and he pointed to a sentence on the first
page. “See that word?” he said. “Right there. That is not science.”
The word was “lone,” as in “PvPlm is the lone plasmepsin in the food vacuole of Plasmodium vivax.” It was a filthy word. A non-scientific word. A flowery word, a lyrical word, a word worthy of -- ugh -- an MFA student.
I hadn’t meant the word to be poetic. I had just used the word “only”
five or six times, and I didn’t want to use it again. But in his mind,
“lone” must have conjured images of PvPlm perched on a cliff’s edge,
staring into the empty chasm, weeping gently for its aspartic protease
companions. Oh, the good times they shared. Afternoons spent cleaving
scissile bonds. Lazy mornings decomposing foreign proteins into their
constituent amino acids at a nice, acidic pH. Alas, lone plasmepsin,
those days are gone.
So I changed the word to “only.” And it hurt. Not because “lone” was
some beautiful turn of phrase but because of the lesson I had learned:
Any word beyond the expected set -- even a word as tame and innocuous as
“lone” -- apparently doesn’t belong in science.
I’m still fairly new at this science thing. I’m less than 4 years
beyond the dark days of grad school and the adviser who wouldn’t
tolerate “lone.” So forgive my naïveté when I ask: Why the hell not?
Why can’t we write like other people write? Why can’t
we tell our science in interesting, dynamic stories? Why must we write
dryly? (Or, to rephrase that last sentence in the passive voice, as
seems to be the scientific fashion, why must dryness be written by us?)
I once taught two different college science writing classes in
back-to-back semesters. The first was mainstream science writing; the
students had fun finding interesting research projects and writing about
them. One student visited a lab where scientists who were building a
new submarine steering mechanism let her practice steering a model sub
around a little tank. Another subjected himself to an fMRI and wrote
about the experience.
But the second semester was science writing for scientists, in which
they learned how to write scientific journal articles -- and it was a
lot less fun. “Keep it interesting!” I told my students during the first
semester. To my second-semester students, I said, “Well, you're not
really supposed to keep it interesting.”
We’re taught that scientific journal articles are just plain
different from all other writing. They're not written in English per se;
they're written in a minimalist English intended merely to convey
numbers and graphs. As such, they have their own rules. For example:
1. Scientific papers must begin with an obligatory nod to their own
relevance, usually by citing exaggerated figures about disease
prevalence or other impending disasters. If your research does not
actually address one of these issues, pretend it does, because hey, that
didn’t stop you on the grant application. For example, you might write,
“Twenty million children die of scabies every day. OMG we built a robot
kangaroo!”
2. Using the first person in your writing humanizes your work. If
possible, therefore, you should avoid using the first person in your
writing. Science succeeds in spite of human beings, not because of us,
so you want to make it look like your results magically discovered
themselves.
3. Some journals, such as Science, officially eschew the passive voice. Others print only the passive voice. So find a healthy compromise by writing in semi-passive voice.
ACTIVE VOICE: We did this experiment.
PASSIVE VOICE: This experiment was done by us.
SEMI-PASSIVE VOICE: Done by us, this experiment was.
Yes, for the semi-passive voice, you’ll want to emulate Yoda. Yoda, you’ll want to emulate.
4. The more references you include, the more scholarly your reader
will assume you are. Thus, if you write a sentence like, “Much work has
been done in this field,” you should plan to spend the next 9 hours
tracking down papers so that your article ultimately reads, “Much work
has been done in this field1,3,6-27,29-50,58,61,62-65,78-315,952-Avogadro’s Number.” If you ever write a review article, EndNote might explode.
5. Grammar textbooks contain elaborate rules about when to use
numerals and when to write out numbers. But numbers are really the only
reason you’re writing your paper, and you don’t want readers to think
you’re into something as lame as words. So make sure every single number is written in its numeral form -- otherwise, 1 day, you’ll awake 2 find that you’re 4got10.
6. Most journals use the past tense. To add flair to your writing,
try writing your entire article in the Third Conditional Progressive
Interrogative tense. Instead of, “We did this experiment,” you’d write,
“Would we have been doing this experiment?” This may seem more
convoluted than simple writing, but your article probably won’t be any
less comprehensible than most other scientific journal articles.
CREDIT: Hal Mayforth
Click the image to enlarge.
7. Always write “we” instead of “I,” even if you performed the
research yourself; the plural ensures that no feelings will be hurt when
credit is attributed. For example, “We investigated these results, but
then we had to use the bathroom, which is where we sat when our spouse
called.”
8. Remember your audience. It consists primarily of graduate students
who, 10 years from now, will include your paper in their own voluminous
collection of superscripted references. So remember them, and make your
name easy to spell.
9. Starting sentences with “obviously” or “as everyone knows”
demonstrates your intellectual superiority. If possible, start sentences
with, “As super-intelligent beings like myself know,” or “Screw your
stupidity; here’s a fact-bomb for you.”
10. Your paper will be peer reviewed, so include flattering
descriptions of all of your peers. Scientists call these “shout-outs” or
“mad props.”
11. Too many results are reported using SI units. (For those unaware, “SI” stands for “Sports Illustrated,”
and it is a system of measurement using units like RBI, Y/A, and, once a
year, cup sizes.) Liven up your results by reporting them in furlongs,
chaldrons, and fluid scruples.
12. If you’re co-authoring a paper, most of your notoriety will
derive from the order of authors and not from the content of your paper
-- so make sure to have vehement and petty debates about whose name goes
first. Here are the general rules for authorship:
FIRST AUTHOR: Weary graduate student who spent hours doing the work.
SECOND AUTHOR: Resentful graduate student who thinks he or she spent hours doing the work.
THIRD AUTHOR: Undergraduate just happy to be named.
FOURTH AUTHOR: Collaborator no one has ever met whose name is only included for political reasons.
FIFTH AUTHOR: Postdoctoral fellow who once made a chance remark on the subject.
SIXTH AUTHOR: For some reason, Vladimir Putin.
LAST
AUTHOR: Principal investigator whose grant funded the project but who
hasn’t stood at a lab bench in decades, except for that one weird photo
shoot for some kind of pamphlet, and even then it was obvious that he or
she didn’t know where to find basic things.
Many scientists see writing as a means to an end, the packing peanuts
necessary to cushion the data they want to disperse to the world. They
hate crafting sentences as much as they hate, say, metaphors about
packing peanuts.
But there’s a reason scientific journal articles tend to be dry, and
it’s because we’re writing them that way. We hope that the data
constitutes an interesting story all by itself, but we all know it
usually doesn’t. It needs us, the people who understand its depth and
charm, to frame it and explain it in interesting ways.
This is, in fact, one of the most appealing aspects of science: We’re
more than just the people who push the pipette buttons. We’re advocates
who get to construct and tell the stories about our science. I can’t
think of a better lone career.
PhD study tip #1: Write early and write often
PhD study tip #2: Read lots of papers
PhD study tip #3: Read other things
PhD study tip #4: Work in short sprints
PhD study tip #5: Focus on small signs of progress
PhD study tip #6: Don’t cut corners
