Grassroots Vol 21 No 1 | Page 47

WRITING SKILLS

Clichés of scientific writing Ken Hughes

Current Address : Brushing Up Science Reprinted From : http :// bit . ly / 3qgJHyY

Novel writers use an average of 100 clichés for every 100 000 words . Or about one every four pages . That ’ s what Ben Blatt found by comparing a range of novels against a list of 4000 clichés . How does scientific writing compare ?

In one sense , scientific writing avoids clichés . A scientist isn ’ t going to write that their new results put the nail in the coffin of the outgoing theory , that they were careful to dot their i ’ s and cross their t ’ s so as to follow the methods of Jones et al . by the book , that Brown et al .’ s finding is a diamond in the rough , or that two possible interpretations are six of one and half a dozen of the other .
In another sense , scientific writing is full of clichés . Our writing often feels like a fill in the blanks : the results of this study show X , these findings are in good agreement with Y , or Z is poorly understood and needs further study . Need more examples ?
Check out the Manchester Academic Phrasebank , a collection of phrases from the academic literature that are “ content neutral and generic in nature .”
Perhaps I ’ m being too harsh . Maybe scientific writing isn ’ t full of dull , procedural , and formulaic expressions . Maybe it ’ s confirmation bias in that I ’ ve read hundreds of scientific papers , so it ’ s easy to recall at least a few such expressions .
This calls for some data . Specifically , an inspection of the text of 360 papers that I ’ ve collected over the years in my field of physical oceanography ( published since 2000 ). I ’ ve used this set of papers before in a similar post .
Combining an automated search with some manual intervention , I checked the 360 papers for a range of clichés : third-person constructs , hedging terms , overzealous assertions , and directives for future work .
The author dislikes third-person statements
It ’ s a myth that scientific writing should demonstrate dispassionate observation . But let ’ s say you do buy into the myth and want to pretend you ’ re somehow impartial and uninvolved in the experiments that you ’ re reporting . When it comes time to recognise your own role , you ’ ll be forced to describe yourself and co-authors in the third person as “ the authors ”.
As in , for example , “ the categories were selected by the authors ”. This awkward phrasing appears in 6 % of the papers ( a small number , fortunately ). And not only is it awkward , it can be ambiguous . Another 6 % of papers use “ the authors ” to refer to other writers , not themselves .
The most common scenario for thirdperson references is phrases along the lines of “ as far as the authors ’ are aware , no studies have considered process X ”. The second-most common usage of “ the authors ” is in abstracts , as if for some reason they need to be even more dispassionate ? Though maybe a desire to remain neutral is not actually relevant here .
Case in point : Acknowledgements , the one section of a scientific paper where personality is always allowed . Yet , if I include that section in my count , the 6 % ramps up to over 30 %. “ The authors thank …”, “ The authors wish to thank …”, “ The authors acknowledge …”, etc . Why gratitude is often expressed in this odd manner beats me .
There ’ s no good reason to use “ the authors ” when “ we ” is simpler , shorter , and better . That ’ s why 96 % of the papers use “ we ” at least once . ( Six of the 14 that don ’ t use “ we ” are single-author papers , but none of these uses “ I ” instead .) On average , the pronoun comes up 22 times per paper . One paper features 247 uses . Ironically , that paper has a single author ( though it ’ s mathematical convention to use “ we ” regardless ). Hedging our bets
“ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence “. A flip side of this oft-repeated aphorism is that if you have only ordinary evidence , you can make only ordinary claims . What ’ s a sure-fire way to ensure your claim is ordinary ? Hedge .
Take the word “ suggest ”. There ’ s at least one use of suggest ( or suggests , suggested , suggesting , suggestion ) in 87 % of the papers . On average the word shows up five times per paper , or about once for every three pages . When you get to using “ suggest ” more than once per page ( as 10 % of papers do ), that ’ s a sign of overuse .
Close cousins of suggest are “ consistent with ” and “ likely ”. Both occur , on average , three times per paper . As it happens , both terms showed up at least once in 256 of the 360 papers . The stronger phrase “ agrees with ” ( or agree without the s ) is 10 times less common .
A different type of hedge is “ believe ”. This is used in 1 / 4 of papers , implying that at least 3 / 4 of us agree that science isn ’ t about “ belief ”. It ’ s about facts , evidence , theories , experiments . ( Obviously , using the word “ believe ” doesn ’ t imply a scientist disagrees with the statement . And seldom is the word used more than once in a paper .)
This is important . That ’ s important . Everything is important .
We all strive to do important science . But in some sense , importance is a zero-sum game . If everything is important , then nothing is . But that doesn ’ t stop us from claiming importance , however tenuous it is .
“ Important ” or “ importance ” shows up in 96 % of papers . That ’ s as often as “ we ”! ( Though “ we ” is used three times more often when tallying up all uses .)
Grassroots Vol 21 No 1 March 2021 46