I'm following up on yesterday's post on where scientists learn how to write (and please, keep those comments coming).
First, Chad Orzel has a nice post about how he learned to write like a scientist. It involves torturing drafts on the rack, and you owe it to yourself to read it.
Second, I'll be putting up a post tonight about the best scientific writing assignment ever, at least in my graduate school experience. It's one more professors teaching graduate students might consider adapting.
In the meantime, I want to throw out a set of factors that probably make a difference in the process of helping scientists learn to write. (Use the comments to add factors I've forgotten.)
- Learning how to write like professional scientists write and learning how to write well aren't always the same thing. There are a whole lot of papers in peer reviewed journals that are not models of clear communication. Point this out to students -- identifying examples of bad writing as well as examples of good writing -- might be useful in getting the next generation of scientists to raise the bar.
- Putting the necessary components of a scientific communication where your reader expects to find them may be at least as important as describing them in lucid prose. Maybe this is a side effect of the amount of bad writing out there in the literature -- scientists are reasonably good at harvesting the information they want as long as it's where they expect it to be in the Background, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, or other canonical paper section.
- When your own grasp of the material you're writing about is not strong, it's not uncommon for your prose to fall apart. This is something writing teachers see frequently in the classroom. If your students really know the subject about which they're writing, their command of the language seems better than when they are confused by it -- the confusion seems to lower the mechanics of the writing a few pegs. Knowing this may help those charged with helping scientists-in-training learn how to write choose assignments where it's easier to focus on the writing.
- In many academic contexts, a student's writing may be less focused on communicating and more focused on obscuring areas where understanding is still fuzzy. Think lab reports. It's worth finding a way to break students of the habit of viewing writing tasks as butt-covering maneuvers .
- Journal articles and grant proposals are not the only things scientists need to be able to write well. There are emails to collaborators, and lab notebooks, just to name two. These have different goals and different audiences, and attending to the differences can be useful in shaping the writing.
- Communicating clearly is hard. This is true even for the people we think of as excellent writers, and it's especially true when what you're trying to communicate is complicated or new.
Something I had forgotten when I commented on the previous post, was that I had actually taken classes in 'Scientific Communication'. The focus there was communicating science to the general population. The big lesson i learned there was how hard it actually is. Most people have not even taken high school level classes in whatever field you are in, and you can throw most of your vocabulary out the window, and people will stop paying attention when you spend two minutes explaining what one word means. For a lot of scientists giving a 'simple' answer is harder than giving the 'hard' answer.
I just wanted to say thanks for this. I'm currently writing up my final year project for a biology degree so am trying to "write like a scientist" as much as possible! These posts have come at just the right time. Thanks again.
One problem is that while many universities have a technical writing class they tend (at least in my experience) to be taught by English majors. Those people have little experience in the technical issues. So say physicists are required to take a technical writing class (good) but it's taught by someone so unfamiliar with the technical issues that the students can't really learn to write. They are told to define so many obvious terms that it becomes an exercise in frustration.
The problem is that good scientific papers are targeted towards their peers. There are whole jargons and theories that one assumes ones audience knows.
Having said that a lot of technical papers are still pretty horribly written. So in general learning how to write in some other context is helpful. That is, take a few English or philosophy classes so you can learn to write well there. Then try to do more in your own field.
But it's definitely a skill that's hard to develop. Far too many papers I read just aren't well written.
Since I have some writing experience, some of my coworkers sometimes ask me how to phrase something. I tell them to just say it. Don't overcomplicate it. Technical and scientific writing are intended to convey information, not dazzle literature critics. Simple sentences work really well for that.
Janet said, "In many academic contexts, a student's writing may be less focused on communicating and more focused on obscuring areas where understanding is still fuzzy."
In this context, I believe that all undergraduate science majors should be required to undertake at least one *mentored* and peer reviewed major writing project. There should be mentoring on the choice of topic, so as to avoid the pitfalls of choosing either too broad or too narrow a subject. There should be mentoring on the background literature research and its presentation. There should be mentoring on the outline and structure of the paper. There should be mentoring during the writing process. And then, the student should be required to defend their paper in front of fellow students who have read the paper beforehand.
Of course, the pitfall here is finding mentors who are qualified in both the science and the writing. Is this an area where emeritus faculty might be highly valued?
One further thought: Once this subject has been fully discussed, a condensation of the most salient points would make an excellent contribution to the "basics" posts.
I'm currently in the throes of writing both my PhD thesis and a research proposal for a postdoc fellowship application, so this is a hot subject for me. And those are two very different challenges! Happily I think grad school has prepared me rather well for both. Not with formal writing courses (I took a class from the department of journalism and communication, but found it mostly useless) but thanks to my advisor's hands on approach, I got to write papers, get my drafts ripped into, review other people's writing, and participate in writing a big grant proposal (that we eventually got, and is currently my source of funding - talk about a rewarding exercise). There's just no substitute for practice (with critical feedback).
That said, I would argue that reading and writing non-scientific material can be very helpful, if only to get the hang of manipulating the language itself. This especially for 'international' writers-to-be: English is not my native language, and after comparing my skills to those of my French-speaking cohort-buddies (most of whom tend to have rather more difficulty in the writing department) I believe that my main advantage over them is having been raised (or inclined) to read a lot since I was a child, and that mostly in English, for various reasons. This has given me enough experience with how the language works to be completely comfortable with the grammar and general vocabulary, and it lets me worry about the purely scientific writing difficulties rather than where to put plurals and so on. (and now I'm hoping I haven't made too many mistakes in this post, or I'll come off as an arrogant and self-deluded pratt, eh?).
So my advice to the international crowd would be: practice using the language as much as possible, even in non-scientific, non-serious settings. And remember, it doesn't have to be Shakespeare to be good practice. If you're reading the latest Dan Brown (yeugh, but whatever), read the original, not the translation. Going to the movies for the latest american blockbuster? Try to catch the original-with-subtitles version, not the dub (if you live in France, this may be a difficult proposition, though). Treat yourself to a DVD every other night, and again, do yourself a favor: watch it subbed, not dubbed.
Finally, be nice to your labmate who has good English writing skills and is willing to review your drafts. If I'm any indication, chocolate will get you far :-)
I think you're really onto something with this: "In many academic contexts, a student's writing may be less focused on communicating and more focused on obscuring areas where understanding is still fuzzy."
I suspect many students are not doing this obfuscation intentionally, but that it comes about as a result of (1) students don't understand and (2) students are more concerned about not being wrong than they are about being right. When you state something clearly it's easy for someone to disagree with you and/or to say you're wrong. I see this approach all the time in oral presentations. In fact, If I use just the right tone as I make a few pointed comments I often can get students to refute the essential tenets of the argument they just finished making. Young students tend to be gigantic relativists and would rather not say anything than say something wrong.
Few points...
I think those science students with backgrounds comprising something also outside the technical disciplines are greatly undervalued. Being a history of physics student myself, I am a bit biased in this regard.
Also, when it comes to writing and communication in general, teaching is probably one of the best tools in teaching an individual how to structure their composition. Sadly the students get taken for a rather confusing ride as the grad student or professor learns by doing.
Correlary question:
What career path does one recommend for students who are great at doing and understanding science, but who can't write if their lives depended on it?