Very few scientists are actually bad communicators.
No, stop laughing.
I mean it.
Some, of course, are terrible lecturers, and nearly all would make atrocious journalists. But they can't get by without writing papers, and that requires sharp communication skills, albeit of a special type.
I’ve been ear-deep in writing over the past week or so, and it strikes me as always that scientific writing, like tightrope-walking, is very difficult even to do gracelessly. To satisfy all the requirements of scientific style and still preserve some kind of individual voice, some personal texture to one's writing, is even more difficult. I rather enjoy trying in the same way that I enjoy writing triolets – rigid rules are a challenge and it’s fun to see how far they can bend – but I don't know how well I achieve it.
I've seen papers manage humour, sarcasm, and even scorn, but these must be diplomatically understated, conveyed by the most subtle word choice. Self-congratulation is right out. Even Fisher couldn't dub one of his results "the Fundamental Theorem" without a generation rolling their eyes at him for being so grandiose (although I'm with Grafen). To the trained eye, Watson and Crick’s barely discernible flourish - "It has not escaped our notice..." - translates unmistakably as "We've changed the world and we know it".
Quite apart from the stylistic constraints, space constraints are brutal (although it will be interesting to see how online journals change this). A scientific paper must briefly and comprehensibly introduce at least one area of very specialist expertise, and possibly two or three disparate ones, in a few paragraphs. Every statement has to be precisely correct, so you can't say something approximately true and leave the exceptions for another day like everybody else does when presenting an unfamiliar subject, from "When a mummy and a daddy love each other very much" onward.
Most painfully of all, one must describe maybe a year’s work and its significance in perhaps five thousand words without repetition, deviation or hesitation. In the most prestigious journals, to which I will start referring disparagingly as “the tabloids” as soon as I’ve published in one, the word limits are low to the point of absurdity and you end up trying to squash your entire chain of reasoning into a figure legend.
I await the launch of the Journal of Scientific Haiku, or J. Txt. Msg., to follow this trend to its limit.
I know there are some science editing types who comment on here - what's your perspective?
I mean it.
Some, of course, are terrible lecturers, and nearly all would make atrocious journalists. But they can't get by without writing papers, and that requires sharp communication skills, albeit of a special type.
I’ve been ear-deep in writing over the past week or so, and it strikes me as always that scientific writing, like tightrope-walking, is very difficult even to do gracelessly. To satisfy all the requirements of scientific style and still preserve some kind of individual voice, some personal texture to one's writing, is even more difficult. I rather enjoy trying in the same way that I enjoy writing triolets – rigid rules are a challenge and it’s fun to see how far they can bend – but I don't know how well I achieve it.
I've seen papers manage humour, sarcasm, and even scorn, but these must be diplomatically understated, conveyed by the most subtle word choice. Self-congratulation is right out. Even Fisher couldn't dub one of his results "the Fundamental Theorem" without a generation rolling their eyes at him for being so grandiose (although I'm with Grafen). To the trained eye, Watson and Crick’s barely discernible flourish - "It has not escaped our notice..." - translates unmistakably as "We've changed the world and we know it".
Quite apart from the stylistic constraints, space constraints are brutal (although it will be interesting to see how online journals change this). A scientific paper must briefly and comprehensibly introduce at least one area of very specialist expertise, and possibly two or three disparate ones, in a few paragraphs. Every statement has to be precisely correct, so you can't say something approximately true and leave the exceptions for another day like everybody else does when presenting an unfamiliar subject, from "When a mummy and a daddy love each other very much" onward.
Most painfully of all, one must describe maybe a year’s work and its significance in perhaps five thousand words without repetition, deviation or hesitation. In the most prestigious journals, to which I will start referring disparagingly as “the tabloids” as soon as I’ve published in one, the word limits are low to the point of absurdity and you end up trying to squash your entire chain of reasoning into a figure legend.
I await the launch of the Journal of Scientific Haiku, or J. Txt. Msg., to follow this trend to its limit.
I know there are some science editing types who comment on here - what's your perspective?
Labels: Boffinry
posted by MissPrism at 9:56 PM
14 Comments:
I followed a link to your Drosophilia post and carried on reading.
My girlfriend is in the last 6 weeks of writing up her PhD thesis and submitting abstracts to journals so I've seen, second hand, a lot of what you're going through. It's incredibly frustrating when she asks for my 'professional' (Editorial) eye because Science writing is so different from what I do and can come across as dry and repetetive.
If only I had her level of understanding of the subject, I'd love to submit a version edited by me to see what the reaction in the Scientific community would be
Oh I love the letters section, where people respond to published papers.
There's a great phrase: "We noted with interest..." which is usually followed up somewhere with "this seems to contradict".
That is science language for 'Your paper was a load of bollocks. But it's not the done thing to say so'.
Now, I wot not of The Science, but I think I agree - anecdotally of course.
Whenever I ask the several scientists of my acquaintance about their subjects, I always notice the same pattern. They start to explain, concisely and precisely, what they do, and I understand perfectly...
...up to a certain point where they leave me behind with their specialist knowlege or general mental framework.
I've done a bit of science and medical editing, albeit nothing too strenuous, and I think the problem is this: most people, scientists and non-scientists, are pretty bad writers. Those who can write and/or edit usually have an arts/social studies background, and are wary about fiddling too much with scientific texts. (Even the specialist editors tend to be from life sciences, so might not know a great deal about physics, etc) However, they are much more confident about dealing with copy in areas they understand.
Therefore, a non-scientific text is more likely to have had thorough editorial going-over, and is therefore easier to read. Editors don't want to fiddle too much with scientific texts, in case they change the meaning without realising.
I'm going to second what tim said. I've edited/proofed a couple of papers for engineers, biologists, and chemists, and I'm always afraid of suggesting too many changes because I don't know the conventions of the field. What sounds clear to a chemist can sound like unnecessarily awkward phrasing to me ("Why don't you just say, 'I added the solvent?' eh?"), and sentences that are grammatically incorrect can slip under my grammar radar because I have no idea what any of the words mean.
Hmm. I copy-edit science papers for a big publishing house. If I'm worried about changing the meaning of a sentence - which happens reasonably regularly, not necessarily because I can't make sense of the science, having been a scientist in a former life, but because for most of the authors, English is not their native language - I just ask the author what they meant. Simple.
In my other job, I work in public policy and have to read lots of government and policy documents. These are invariably badly written (no surprises there). Scientists do try to write to enlighten, which is more than can be said for most other professions.
Yes. Every time I have to edit something written by someone who knows more about his or her subject than I do, if I don't understand something, I just ask the author, too. Sometimes it's a matter of professional language I won't ever comprehend, but that I have to reshape to fit a certain size space. Sometimes it's just that the author screwed up and really is being unclear, even to other cognoscenti. Scientists and other smartypants types make errors just like "normal" people, and would also prefer not to have them published.
And really, it's not that scientists are bad communicators. It's that many scientists only seem interested in communicating about science. This can create difficulties in situations where one or more nonscientists share a household with one or more scientists.
My writer/artist mother who, after their divorce, declared my rocket scientist/patent lawyer father "socially autistic," liked to tell a story about an engineer and his wife. The wife asked the engineer husband to take out the trash. The engineer husband replied, "Oh, I can't possibly be bothered to think at those levels."
Seriously, that laughter you thought you heard in response to your initial statement here? It wasn't about the writing.
I think this is all academic writing not just signed stuff. I come from a history background currently working on a master's degree and the things I've read. Well let's just say I haven't had to buy any sleeping pills since I started my BA.
The other thing that people don't like about science writing is all those strange words: cline, molar, mesoderm, quark, confidence intervals. This can't be helped. There is no simpler, more colloquial term for chromatin (or whatever). If you want to read about it you'll just have to learn what the terms mean.
I think your second sentence sums it up: Very few scientists are actually bad communicators... albeit of a "special" type. Once you ask them to communicate on something other than their subject... well, its like a fish out of water really!
I just want to add to my previous comment that many of the writers I worked with were ESL students (grad or undergrad), so they couldn't offer me a whole lot of help.
And I want to second what jmnlman said. It's true -- bad writers are everywhere. But if they serve no other purpose than putting us to sleep, at least this gives me confidence that I can get my own work published.
specs said: many of the writers I worked with were ESL students (grad or undergrad), so they couldn't offer me a whole lot of help.
That's the case with my authors. I still ask them. They seem to manage.
We ESL scientists have another problem: Regrdless of how good our English is, we are not entitled to any 'style'. No bending of any rules for us. There will always be someone pointing out that "this is not how it's supposed to be." I once wrote a paper with an American co-author (who didn't participate at all in the writing and barely read the stuff) and all of a sudden, I was allowed much more freedom.
People often ask me to look over things they've written, because I am king of writing, prince of punctuation and grand duke of grammar. When it is sciencey stuff (I am sadly not a sultan of science) the following exchange always takes place.
MIKE: Why don't you phrase this part in a different way, like this? [retypes section]
SCIENCEY FRIEND: Because then I would be stating gravity/cancer/semen is nonexistent/made of cheese/a government plot.
MIKE: Ah. I don't understand science, see?
SCIENCEY FRIEND: I see that.
MIKE: Everything written here is gibberish to me.
SCIENCEY FRIEND: So this entire episode has been a waste of time?
MIKE: Probably. Pint?
Word for word, every time.
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