“Science writers address the larger public about the science and technology that shape modern life, as well as the broader social issues—nuclear power safety, for example, or bioethics, or the environment—that science so profoundly influences.
Science writers respect scientists and engineers, but don’t treat their work as privileged, or as immune from informed criticism. Science writers never forget that the work of science takes place within a human and historical frame—and supply their readers with that context as needed.
Science writers may, or may not, hold academic credentials in science or engineering. But they are always humanists, one foot in the sciences, the other in the arts, as apt to be seduced by a shapely sentence as by an elegant scientific idea.”
“There are several different kinds of writing that fall under the umbrella of scientific writing. Scientific writing can include:
- Peer-reviewed journal articles (presenting primary research)
- Grant proposals (you can’t do science without funding)
- Literature review articles (summarizing and synthesizing research that has already been carried out)
As a student in the sciences, you are likely to spend some time writing lab reports, which often follow the format of peer-reviewed articles and literature reviews. Regardless of the genre, though, all scientific writing has the same goal: to present data and/or ideas with a level of detail that allows a reader to evaluate the validity of the results and conclusions based only on the facts presented. The reader should be able to easily follow both the methods used to generate the data (if it’s a primary research paper) and the chain of logic used to draw conclusions from the data. Several key elements allow scientific writers to achieve these goals:
- Precision: ambiguities in writing cause confusion and may prevent a reader from grasping crucial aspects of the methodology and synthesis
- Clarity: concepts and methods in the sciences can often be complex; writing that is difficult to follow greatly amplifies any confusion on the part of the reader
- Objectivity: any claims that you make need to be based on facts, not intuition or emotion”
