CRISPR Project Lab

CRISPRing lepidopterans to study wings

Scientific Writing

Overview

Scientific writing is no different from other writing in the main respect that you have to do it to get better at it. Ira Glass had this insight:

“It’s hard to make something that’s interesting. It’s really, really hard. It’s like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that’s written or anything that’s created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity… So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will…”
― Ira Glass

I hope you’ll agree that science, and your writing about your science, should be more than mediocre! Writing is a process. Processes take time and are iterative. In the scientific writing process, you will write and then rewrite. This iterative work allows you to practice scientific writing, which is what makes us better at it, with your research report as the end goal.

In this blog post on Scientist Sees Squirrel, guest blogger Katie Grogan helps explain how to get started with scientific writing, and how to keep going while writing. Importantly, she explains how to set writing goals and work in small daily bouts to complete your writing, first by generating content, and later by copy-editing that content.

In this blog post from Stephen Heard’s blog Scientist Sees Squirrel, Heard explains how to tell a story with your scientific work. He also emphasizes that storytelling in science does not involve creating a fiction.

Finally, think about writing in a journalistic voice, which brings objectivity and clarity to synthesize a myriad of primary sources.

Introduction

Workshopping the Abstract

  • Read the Guide to Writing Lab Reports section on the Introduction.
  • State your current hypothesis (or research statement).
  • List background material needed for reader to understand  the hypothesis
  • Find supporting evidence (from articles you will cite) for background material.
    • [Identify one article and find it’s key result that you want to cite, then do the following]
      1. Takes notes on the relevant key result from the article
      2. Puts notes away and write the result from memory in your own words
      3. Confirm accuracy and correct any errors, still using your own words.
  • Outline each point from the background material
  • Organize the ideas into a logical flow.
  • Incorporate the supporting evidence
  • Add in-text citation (Author, Year) for each piece of supporting evidence.
  • Convert your outline into sentences
    1. Strong scientific writing is often very direct: subject–>verb–>object. This helps avoid passive voice: object–>passive verb.
    2. To maintain flow, use relevant transition phrases between ideas and replace “it” with the noun it references.
    3. Refer to “General writing style” section of the Lab Report Guidelines.
    4. Screen for disallowed words and phrases like “prove,” “disprove,” and “statistically insignificant.”
  • Create a literature cited that includes every article referenced in the introduction and no additional articles.
  • Proofread.
Methods
Results
Discussion

First, draft: For each paragraph of your discussion, write a single sentence or idea.

  • First paragraph: Summarize your results to provide an answer or support for your research question. Recognize the important of negative results.
  • Next paragraphs interpret your results, supporting your conclusions with evidence. You might include some or all of these:
    • Were your results expected or unexpected? Do they align with your research question?
    • State your results with authority, using unambiguous word choices.
    • Did you interpret the results in the context of other literature?
    • Have you considered problems, inconsistent results, and counter-evidence?
      • Cite sources of error succinctly and without excuses. Error types include sampling error (usually too small a sample size), non-repeatable results.
      • Do not belabor this section.
  • Penultimate paragraph: Describe future extensions of current work, or next steps.
  • Final paragraph: State the specific importance of your results or this type of work to the scientific community. Why did you do this work and why does it matter?

Then, revise:

  • Reconfirm that you’ve used a coherent, logical organization
  • Check that you have avoided using the word “prove” and the colloquial use of the word “theory.”
  • Confirm you have cited all sources in text and in the literature cited using the style of the journal Genetics.
  • Seek peer review.