Reading #1 (and writing #5)--opaque scientific papers
This blog covers mostly reviewing papers, and a bit on writing papers. But a post I saw in Facebook requires a discussion about reading scientific papers. I covered this a little bit under "reviewing", but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to weigh in a bit more.
There is a wonderful column from Science that is worth linking to: column here
I remember those days.
First, not all scientific articles are so bad. But some surely are. A lesson to be gained from reading such papers is how not to write!
Second, to my astonishment, almost 30 years after its publication, people still seem to be using my book, Understanding Paleoclimate from the pre-Quaternary Geologic Record (Columbia University Press). It is badly out of date. It was partly out of date the day it appeared. So why isn't it being completely ignored now? I think it's because I have never fallen into the temptation of trying to sound erudite. To me, the point of publication is to convey information. If readers have to work hard to get that information, many won't try. I made my writing simple enough that even my non-geology family members could understand a lot of my book, stumbling only on the inevitable geology-specific words. Some such words are jargon; others are just basic terms. I tried to avoid jargon, but of course could not avoid some basic terms (e.g., fluvial channel), given the audience (graduate students and peers).
True story: I was once going to write a paper with a colleague. This guy had actually published a paper that contained a sentence that was more than a page long. It was perfectly grammatical, and perfectly unintelligible. After a few attempts, we gave up the project. No scientific dispute was involved; we agreed completely on the science. It was the divergence in our styles of writing. I couldn't write the way he writes (and did not want to try) and he couldn't meet my style, either.
Never forget it is the science you've done that will impress people, not the writing. You want to make sure as broad an audience as possible can understand what you've done. People who try to come across as "erudite" often end up coming across as "opaque".
There is a wonderful column from Science that is worth linking to: column here
I remember those days.
First, not all scientific articles are so bad. But some surely are. A lesson to be gained from reading such papers is how not to write!
Second, to my astonishment, almost 30 years after its publication, people still seem to be using my book, Understanding Paleoclimate from the pre-Quaternary Geologic Record (Columbia University Press). It is badly out of date. It was partly out of date the day it appeared. So why isn't it being completely ignored now? I think it's because I have never fallen into the temptation of trying to sound erudite. To me, the point of publication is to convey information. If readers have to work hard to get that information, many won't try. I made my writing simple enough that even my non-geology family members could understand a lot of my book, stumbling only on the inevitable geology-specific words. Some such words are jargon; others are just basic terms. I tried to avoid jargon, but of course could not avoid some basic terms (e.g., fluvial channel), given the audience (graduate students and peers).
True story: I was once going to write a paper with a colleague. This guy had actually published a paper that contained a sentence that was more than a page long. It was perfectly grammatical, and perfectly unintelligible. After a few attempts, we gave up the project. No scientific dispute was involved; we agreed completely on the science. It was the divergence in our styles of writing. I couldn't write the way he writes (and did not want to try) and he couldn't meet my style, either.
Never forget it is the science you've done that will impress people, not the writing. You want to make sure as broad an audience as possible can understand what you've done. People who try to come across as "erudite" often end up coming across as "opaque".
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