A Crash Course in Scientific Writing

Kenyon Institute in Biomedical and Scientific Writing(abridged version: William C. L. Stewart, Ph.D.)

May 2, 2015

Attributes of Good Scientific Writing?• Clear• Concise• Concrete• Compelling• Convincing• Accurate

…but how do we get there?• Get started!Freewriting - don’t edit, don’t judge, don’t stop

• Your Story & The Audience“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.” ― John Cheever

• Revision“I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling widely enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much.”

― Anne Lamott

Average Study Section Scores1st Review : 3.86 3.14 2.29 3.14 2.00 2.43 3.29 3.002nd Review: 2.29 2.71 2.14 2.71 1.71 2.14 3.00 1.86

Paired t-test [Ho: μ = 0] : P-value = 0.0153

On average, everyone improved by about half (0.57) of a rating point!

Empirical Evidence for Revision

Opening

Challenge

Action

Resolution

Structureof a Story:

OpeningChallenge

ActionResolution

After Schimel, J. Writing Science. Oxford, 2012

General

Specific

Specific

General

Another Way to View the Same Thing

Opening (AND)Challenge (BUT)Action (THEREFORE)Resolution (MAKE ME CARE)

Why is it so hard?

• Content is complex, and to some degree, new• Format is constraining (e.g. grant, paper, elevator pitch etc.)• Audience• Diverse• Critical • Busy

• It’s very difficult to stop your own soundtrack (read aloud)

Some specific tools that can help:

• Agent/Action: make the agent the subject, and the action the verb.- Abstract noun phrases (e.g. contaminating genomic DNA)

- Many words before verb - Empty verbs (e.g. assess, utilize, involving, etc.)- Nominalizations: nouns created from verbs or adjectives or …

• Active vs. Passive Voice • Topic/Stress:

- put the topic first and the stress last.- put short, familiar, simple material first and long, new, complex

material last. - put the main idea in the independent clause, and the secondary

information in the dependent clause (which vs. that).

A Few Examples…Removal of contaminating genomic DNA from RNA samples was accomplished by

treatment with DNase.

We treated RNA samples with DNase to remove contaminating DNA. (active) RNA samples were treated with DNase to remove contaminating DNA. (passive)

Localization of aquaporins to the luminal membrane instead of membrane vesicles is

typically associated with increased water permeability of the kidney tubule epithelium.

(nominalization, noun phrase, causation vs. correlation, increased relative to what, context)

Water permeability increases when aquaporins localize to the luminal membrane of the kidney tubule epithelium.

• But

Best-selling novels are often described as “page turners.” Best-cited papers are best-funded proposals are the same. They draw readers in and lead them through the story – they flow. A break in that flow can derail a reader and abruptly change a piece from a “page turner” to a “re-turner” with a rejection letter attached. -Schimel, J. Writing Science. Oxford, 2012.

One of the Most Important Elements of Telling a Good Story