Judy Swan, Scientific Writing: Beyond Tips and Tricks

I've been focusing on scientific writing for more than 20 years in part based on my experience in graduate school that I had fantastic mentors I had really excellent advisors and worked with trim terrific people so I learned a lot about how to do an experiment what's a control what's a good research system how do you know when you're done but when it came time to write nobody actually had very much to say to me except you know how to do this don't you and what do you say at that point your fifth year six year graduate student actually have no I sure yeah right yeah okay and and so go and do it and so I did do it and what I discovered then and repeatedly since then that although in the process of writing my papers and writing my dissertation although my data remained the same my results did not anybody ever have that experience not yet you will you will you will okay that the day that I didn't do any new experiments but the process of writing changed what I thought I had and in fact what I had and what I published and what I'm known for and that struck me as really interesting and surprising because it suggested that in the process of writing up it's such a odd metaphor you just I've got the results I'm just going to write them up like the laundry list and the process of writing up my data and my results that I was actually discovering new things and therefore this was part of science and here I was at this mecca of science and nobody had anything to say about it now I also thought that sounded like an opportunity and it turned out to be and I was fortunate that I ended up shortly after that at Duke where I met to the director of writing George copán and I ended up being able to make a career typical iting so that I want to talk to you about strategies for thinking about writing that I learned back 20 years ago and have been promulgating ever since because this is a group that's particularly concerned about communicating not only with who's communicating especially outside of your specific discipline what I want to focus on in the two hours that we have together are things that will help you in both arenas so we're going to try to introduce you to ways of thinking about language that I hope will open the door to thinking more broadly and to going out off in search of other resources and other materials and I've got some you know some some those the second page to the handout that has resources that will come around a little later and in addition we'll give you give you some materials that you can work with in PCR and going forward okay let me ask a couple questions first though how many of you write about your science once a week I'd like a show of hands please and don't worry this is not a prerequisite for being here okay no not fair okay how many of you write about your science once a month well that's a little better that's pretty good how about once a quarter at least once a quarter all right so we had anybody who's up at six months or a year once a year we didn't get their hands up there everybody writes at least once a year okay please think about your PI think about the person who runs your research group how many of them write about science once a week please raise your hands yeah okay guess what guys you just signed up for the job of writer you did I mean you know you are going to live and die not only by the quality of the research you produce but more by the your ability to get it out fast enough and to get it into the right place into the hands of the right readers scientists are writers sorry I didn't like that either no yeah I I had a high school teacher who was so disappointed I was going into science because he she writes so well and I thought heck with that so I find it very amusing that this is what I do now so scientists are writers let me give you one more twist here it's not just this that's an easy sell I mean you know look let's be let's be clear you're going to be writing and that's it doesn't you can think oh I'm not going to run all the research lab in an institution I can solve a pharmaceutical industry I've worked for government agencies that's what scientists do that's what experts do they produce text your job will be as a writer except if you're a scientific writer your job is a bigger job than most of the writers out there because what distinguishes scientific writing from other writing and other disciplines is not that we write about numbers so do economists or not that we write about images so do art historians but the thing about economists and art historians is they write single authored documents and we don't do we we write multi author documents so not only will you be spending your career writing a good percentage of the time but you'll be writing with other people so guess what not only are all scientists writers they are all de facto teachers of writing because you're going to spend your careers working with people who have different degrees of experience in writing on communal documents I mean I just came back from a week at the EPA it is my eighth trip there they write documents of 2228 pages with 65 authors and as they put it if somebody isn't trying to sue them they're not doing their job okay so these are really complex documents and if you once used wing so very quickly you're going to find yourself in a situation where you are not responsible you're responsible not only for what you write but for giving feedback to all the other people who are writing with you and unless your co-authors give you what you want and what you need without any feedback from you you are in exactly the same situation that new instructors in our writing program are in when they face their first stack of papers because I mean know somebody teaching a writing seminar can't go in and rewrite all 12 drafts that the students have failed on and tell them what to do they've got to give they've got to provide feedback that enables the writer to get better alright so that's the framework for what I want to do tonight is I actually want to give I want to sort of move you to thinking about writing and language and to from to a Syrian perspective to one that I think you'll find more systematic and more logical so I'm going to give a couple metaphors for thinking about it and then we're actually going to do some hands-on stuff all right and we're going to do and I'm going to set you up to think about how to analyze things and then I'm going to let you do a bunch of revisions that come from a workshop that I gave at the National Institutes of Health several times it's actually an exercise that was developed at NIH using materials from NIH and that's what we're going to do is that sound worthwhile for the next couple hours okay all right so what I do is I teach writing from the perspective of readers and that's interesting because most of what we hear about writing is from the perspective of writers and it asks us to figure out but know by that I mean you're sitting there you got writers have problems writings hard you got a blank piece of paper or a blank screen in front of you and the question is what do I say next and what do I say next and I got five pages to fill before Tuesday if I'm in a writing class what am I going to say I only have half a page to say now okay and and how am i how am I going to do this or you got the situation of I've only got 150 words for this abstract but I've got 400 words and I still haven't said what's important to me and it's due tomorrow because it's always due tomorrow right and because because you're spending so much time in the laboratory getting the data because of writing you should know how to do this you can just do it in your sleep so we're constantly in this situation where we're in a panic typically or at least concerned about what am I going to say next and then we get all this negative feedback because it seems whatever you say next is the wrong thing okay yeah so let's go let's go there we have we do I work I work mostly with students Mike so what actually what I have our course is graduate students at Princeton and so I work with grad students but I also meet with their faculty so let me tell you a secret that I tell all my students your faculty are expert writers they're not expert teachers of writing and they often don't even have a language for capturing their expertise they've learned it the hard earned way they've been copy edited to death which is the only way we knew how to teach writing until about 30 years ago go in and change it for somebody you see the changes I made yeah I see those changes now you know what to do great yeah if I ever think that thought exactly this way I'll know what to do how am i how do I think a different thought I we need a more systematic approach to your advisors your the professor's here are they couldn't be here if they were not expert writers but they they don't have a language and that's what I've been trying to develop for talking about their expertise and so they don't have a way of passing that on to their junior colleagues imagine trying to do your research without a specialized vocabulary imagine we didn't have a word called control you were trying to explain this to people everybody would be pretty frustrated okay how did this get there so thinking about writing from the readers perspective ask you to forget about never mind what I want to say there's a place for that you got to get to a draft but then you start thinking about who's reading this document and what do they need from it and how are they going to behave now the bad news for you for graduate school is it you don't know this at the beginning of graduate school how many of you have submitted a paper for review to a journal and had difficulty with the review okay you're starting to learn what kind of readers are out there the standards of those readers what they need to know what that I call that that this is my target metaphor writing a scientific research article is like shooting for a small target at the far end of a football field it is it these are the most compact concise heavy-duty documents I've encountered and I've worked with a lot of different people the research article is the product of a race or it's what's left over when everything has been stripped off it except exactly what needs to be there and it's it's basically almost impossible to see that that's what you're doing early in your career you got to spend three years in the laboratory convincing yourself that your data are real before you have even an inkling of what it might take to convince somebody else so we have to I want you to worry about writing from the readers perspective and I actually would define graduate school the what you're really learning in graduate school or one of the one of the ways of art framing the whole arc you're learning to become a professional reader of science that's why by the end of your graduate years you'll probably be asked to review papers and to ask act as a peer reviewer because you'll be able to represent the scientific community but it's really hard to do that at the beginning okay so I sort of want to put that out there that one of that that in addition to learning all the hot stuff in your field and all the new techniques and working on your project you have a bigger research project you need to understand who are the people that scientists write - okay so I want you to think about writing from the readers perspective it'll just give you a couple metaphors and then we'll plunge into actually doing some real work here reading takes energy is that fair reading scientific articles especially takes energy okay and what readers do with that energy is they try to figure out what does this text mean and I would like to say that they they're worried about two different things right my chalk up there ah I knew I put some chocolate eye but then the board disappeared okay what readers are trying to do is they writers produced a text and the reader is trying to figure out what does that text me and I want to say that what readers are doing is they're interpreting a text and you might not like that you might think none of the time we like to think of text as if they're if they're the magic code like you know here's the text and and here's the decoder ring and you'll unpack what I packed into this text sorry right reading is not stuffit expander okay it's it you got readers interpret they look at the words on the page and they look at what they understand about you know the writer purpose setting language feel okay and then they figure out what does that text likely to mean in that context so readers are interpreting and what this means is that there's no way to control what anything means such that everybody interprets it the same way I like to call this the thermodynamics moment it's going to take you back to that moment in freshman chemistry where you contemplated the heat death of the universe thermal gets recited as you can't win you can only break even you can't break even except at Absolute Zero and you can't get to absolute zero right okay this is the thermodynamics of language text don't have fixed meanings words words are arbitrary the syllable ma is in almost every language on the planet and it has a different meaning at every one of them okay words don't have fixed meanings that have interpretations interpretations are assigned by readers and readers and therefore interpretations possible interpretations are infinite and so we're going to start thinking about readers we have to think richly about readers about the ways that they might interpret in the way we intend but they might for reasons that are pretty obvious when we think hard about them they don't know science they're afraid of science the talk you're going to have next month that they've got they've got some biases that make it hard for them to want to believe a piece of science that's going to affect their interpretation so reading takes energy and that energy goes into interpretation and interpretation has two parts first readers read for structure and by that I mean what is this piece of language what are these words as that a sentence is it a paragraph is it a document you know what am i reading that's structure I've got this a sentence where's the subject where's the verb thank you that's structure and after they interpret structure they go for substance now that I know how this is a sentence what does it mean fair and in fact it goes in that order first we figure out what's what are these words doing and then what am I supposed to do with that information okay so let me put these two claims these two postulates together there's a certain amount of energy to read and reader energy is finite at a given moment you only have a certain amount of energy to do anything that energy gets this gets dispersed as structure and then substance and this is a sum zero gain energy that goes into figuring out the structure is not available to figure out the substance if you're spending all of your energy trying to figure out how these words or a sentence where's the verb where's the second clause what's the subject then you have very little energy to figure out what it might be telling you and that's a real problem for us because our substance itself is sometimes really complicated and needs a lot of thought okay so we can actually and I'll give you my working definition of bad scientific writing bad scientific writing is writing that requires a disproportionate amount of the readers energy simply to figure out what it's all about that's probably 50% of the literature right there yeah okay all right so more hoping it's getting a little a little less all right so readers are worried about structure and substance now I'm going to jump ahead because I've got reference there we could talk more about that and I could build up a whole start but I'm going to jump into a set of what I call reader expectations so because readers are reading for structure before they read for substance if you know something about what readers expect in given locations you can make some predictions about what readers will do with information in those locations give you an example the readers we when you're reading the scientific research article you're reading the moe structured document academic document for sure that any field has where do you expect to get the experimental details in the method section right have you am sure you have read a paper where you did got those details in the results section how'd you feel sort of annoying like what are they doing don't they know better I don't want to put this kind of detailed energy into reading this stuff this belongs over there so we know this is the document level and it turns out that structures everywhere structures everywhere and so if you can start paying attention to structure you start to see how readers you get a clue into how readers are interpreting whether it is the level of documents and all the way down to the level of sentences okay so let me actually stop being theoretical and start to give you my agenda here I want to think about how do readers figure out what to emphasize because if you could if you could have a reasonable meet if you could be reasonably confident that your readers were emphasizing what you thought was important rather than what they thought was important that might be fifty percent of the job right there if they of you and you said this is when you put something out because you thought it was important you were confident that they said oh yeah I got it that's important I'm going to pay attention to it okay one of the challenges of writing about science actually of any field but especially science is that sometimes we have competing messages to deliver there is this result there is this uncertainty there's good news there's bad news and one of the dangers and we see this happen all the time is that what some what I want you to emphasize is not what you decide to emphasize and you run with the stuff that I would like to minimize and you make it into a big deal right so what I want to look at are how do readers make decisions about emphasizing information and then we're going to work with this handout and then actually then I'm going to push you in groups because I've I've done this big this big roomful of groups that you get to do some hands-on stuff so what are the cues that readers use to figure out what's important I'm going to do a structural cue if I have two clauses in a sentence although blah-blah-blah-blah-blah main clause which you can emphasize most main Clause yeah you can hear it in the name readers tend to put grant emphasis to the information that arrives in the main clause main clause is also known as an independent clause it's the free-standing clause okay and can hear it a main Clause subordinate clause this shouldn't we shouldn't have to make this explicit but we do main Clause is where we get the emphasis okay a second Q for emphasis that we don't have time to develop it I'm just going to tell you I'm going to tell you the proverb save the best for last right so there's a tendency of readers to emphasize information that arrives at a moment of closure at the end of something if they get to the end okay at the sentence level they get to the end the chances of a reader leaving in the middle of one of your sentences unless you've bludgeoned them to death are really slim they may check out immediately after the sentence but you can predict that a reader will stick around to the end of a sentence so there's a cue for emphasis what comes at the end tends to get emphasis okay with me give you another cue for emphasis from a reader's perspective something that takes longer to go into must be more important right if it demands more energy from you you hope it deserves more energy from you and that it's more significant so there's a cue for emphasis in terms of length and this explains experience I had in the laboratory you probably have to you do an experiment the same same way 10 times and it runs properly nine times and then you have to write it up those 10 times and somehow the one time it didn't work seems to take over the whole thing because you're spending so much time and energy and so many sentences trying to explain away the anomalous result that all the good results have disappeared right so length is the signal for emphasis here's a fourth one repetition and you might think oh we don't like repetition in scientific research Argo baloney what's the main result where where is the main result of a scientific research our article reported somebody tell me in the abstract and in the results and in the discussion and in the title and pin2 that we hope at the end of the discussion at the end of the introduction how do you know it's the main result because it's the result gets that gets repeated so we use repetition as a source of emphasis we don't want repetition that is unnecessary that becomes redundant but we certainly use repetition so we know that queue so part of what you see what I'm trying to do I'm trying to surfacing you what you know as a reader but you've never been probably able to access and capture as a writer because you didn't have a language to do that okay one more source of emphasis and I'm going to put it down here and it's a category I'll use the formal term semantics ie words the words can tell you what's important if a writer says the most important thing is then unless you're being you know sort of annoying and uncooperative I think you'll believe them but the words themselves sometimes signal importance to us right if you've got a hot word or a buzz word or a word that is in big it has a lot of power in it the word can carry things as well now most writing most writing handbooks talk about emphasis and talk about writing in general as if writing with 80% word choice fine limo juiced the right word and it's always the right word of its french van limos used and 20 percent structure and we're going to do an example that I hope will convince you that it's the other way around that readers take 80% of their instructions at least for emphasis from the structure words count but much less than you think and I think this is great because I love structure I'm a scientist structure structure is what we do really well so you can start paying attention to structure you will see all sorts of things okay questions before we turn to the hand up super making sense okay let take a look please at the handout you've got and I should put well I'm going to pan mine without my glasses and I want us to take a look at these first four sentences and I'm just going to read them to you everybody got a handout here this is the one that has the PCR on the top up if somebody comes down towards the front and could bring some extra from the back that would be great it got a couple people here who need them okay maybe I will get my glasses what we're doing that yeah okay do you'll have the handout let me just introduce you to these four sentences one a hi yes although Fred's a nice guy he beats his dog B although Fred beats his dog he's a nice guy C Fred's a nice guy but he beats his dog D Fred beats his dog but he's a nice guy okay now first let me just tell you these are made-up examples this did not come from the NIH okay so this is the pedagogical I just want to be clear because all the other examples are from the NIH but this one is pedagogic all right what we have here are four sentences about Fred yes with two clauses and in each of these four sentences we know the same two facts fred is a nice guy and fred beats his dog okay so the data are identical in these four so now we're going to do an experiment a little bit of crowdsourcing and I have to set it up first so number one those of you who are dog haters you do not have to identify yourselves but I want you to understand that at least for the purposes of our discussion over twenty minutes dog beating is a bad thing you with me good okay now those of you who are dog lovers I have to ask your forbearance as well I want you to consider the possibility that somebody who beats his dog might actually be a nice guy oh and I could already see half of you just looked away and said no no I won't do that and if that's you okay if that's you if your moral backbone is so erect that it will cannot be contorted into this then I have to change your question because what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask all of us to judge Fred and since you have already condemned Fred that's not useful okay what your question is going to be not to what do you think of Fred but what do you think the author of this sentence wants you to think about Fred okay so what's the message this sentence is sending as opposed to your personal judgment with me okay so here's how it's going to go I'm going to reread those four sentences and I'm going to ask you to vote and you vote by putting your hands out thumbs up yay Fred or thumbs down nay Fred are you instructed are we ready here we go okay a-although Fred's a nice guy he beats his jaw dog please judge Fred thumbs down on Fred a thumbs down anybody thumbs up here no it wouldn't seem to be nine it was a big group woo crap you're all down on Fred inter good B although Fred beats his dog he's a nice guy please judge Fred look at that okay now this is looking more this is your thumbs up you're not a hundred percent thumbs up and that you know some of you have held out okay but you like 98% thumbs up let's Tracey Fred's a nice guy but he beats his dog okay now this is introduced did you notice how much longer it took to get to that position your position that position seems to be more negative than positive but it's still pretty split d Fred beats his dog but he's a nice guy okay now you're more positive than negative but you're still a collectively split and some of you are like you know just I'm not doing this I've get a lot better you're individually split okay so so but let me see if I can summarize this as a population you are more positive than negative but as more it's like 60 or 70 percent positive and 30 percent negative it's taking longer to get there and there's more of this okay congratulations Carnegie Mellon you are a normal audience I have personally done this experiment about a hundred times and all audiences all groups of readers respond as you did now before I say anything else if you were ever in the minority in any of these positions do not wear a you to our normal okay you are part of the normal minority and it is a normal because we're talking about not the reader there is no such thing as the reader its readers and this is this is I you know I love it when there's this many people because they can actually do real statistics if I want around here and and so real readers respond as you do now how did you respond hey guys you changed your minds yes and the data did not change data are the same but they did not we did not reach the same conclusions on those data in these four sentences that's interesting and that's why I entitled this the facts do not speak for themselves you can just imagine that the guys who write who wrote the pink sheets at NIH they were really interested in this one because there's good news and there's bad news and the question is what's the judgment of those two okay what's going on here well we've got two clauses and they are the same length so we're not even dealing with this part of it we're just dealing with these two expectations we've got two clauses one is a main clause the other is a qualifying clause one closets at the beginning one clauses at the end so let's go through these four of them and analyze them although Fred's a nice guy he beats his dog main Clause beats his dog and placement beats his dog to structural instructions pointing in the same direction to emphasize dog beating and you all got it 100% on this down Fred the bad guy that's what I'm supposed to take away B although Fred beats his dog he's a nice guy main Clause nice guy and placement nice guy your response go Fred go Fred now you know the dog beating presents' some people is that there's always a group that just can't go there so it's like 98% preferred for B you typically alright now let's look at C and D Fred's a nice guy but he beats his dog main clause nice guy and placement because dog you feel the ambivalence can you feel that of being pulled in two different directions that's why it takes a little longer for people to vote now it isn't that when n placement and main cause conflict everybody slowly goes to one side or the other they split that's at least what it looks like that faced with a conflict of which of these do I pay more attention to some people go with main Clause main point I'm running with it and the other and other people say n placement last word I'm running with it and everybody's a little off base because they're getting a conflicting message so that suggests that when now with the fact that we're more negative than positive suggests that when n placement and main Clause are in conflict maybe we go a little more for the end placement maybe or maybe when there's a conflict we pay more attention to the data themselves and try to decide what do we think like maybe dog beating is a worse bad than nice guy is a good so but fortunately we have indeed the control and we flip it so d Fred beats his dog but he's a nice guy and put main Clause beats his dog and placement nice guy and did you notice what happened you flipped again you're still very split it's about 30-40 percent go with the main clause but the other 60% go up here actually realize what I forgot to say on the one I said if you if you're in the minority not only should you feel normal that's good but you should be paying extra attention if you were ever in the minority here because what you have just discovered that you may not have known is that most people don't read like you that's really important to know you might need to do this deliberately consciously for the reader even if it's if it seems a little odd to you okay so what we start what do we do with this let me just we're just recap what we've got here and then we're going to add length and other things to this and then I'm going to set you free to go work on it yourselves for a bit okay what are we getting you want a sweat you want to swing the judgment one way or the other you stack your instructions you have bad news and you want people to empathize the bad news you put the bad news in a main Clause you put the main clause at the end and you can predict that 99% of your readers will go with that they will at least understand what you want them to do they might object but they will still understand what you're saying you want to go Paul positive you put the put the good news in the main clause you put it at the end you want to be ambivalent and some yeah some you want to be ambivalent sometimes you split the instructions but now you have to figure out well what's the strategic split am i ambivalent but I'd like a little more positive I'm ambivalent I'd like a little more negative you pick but everybody will get in bivolo --nz all right let's complicate it ready let's drop lengths into this equation here we go take a look at e and f fred is a good husband a caring father of fine Colligan and all together nice guy even though he beats his dog I would submit that length makes a difference yeah it's a little hard to see what that difference let's go try F even though he beats his dog fred is a good husband a caring father a fine colleague and it all together a nice guy now like definitely makes a difference even an F and it's a little clearer to see what it is let's look at that first okay even though he beats his dog we know the structure what kind of clause is this the subordinate clause where is it early we know that structure or subordinate clause early oh I should minimize this because the main clause late is going to take it over now we get to the main clause Fred yes is a good husband or caring father a phone call Wiggin it all together nice guy mrs. length it might even be repetition thread for president right this is clearly an apology for Fred by the time the sentence is over the dog has slunk off and walked into the backroom always forgotten about him okay so you put length in here and it out and it changes things now we'll go back to at E starts off Fred is a good husband oh we know this structure which causes early main Clause Fred is a good husband a caring father a fine colligan and all together nice sky so now we're already looking at the structure we saw before the C and D right where the main Clause is early and the subordinate clause is late now the last time we looked at that structure when faced with a conflict between emplacement and main Clause readers went with the N placement what have we done now we've dropped a lot of length into the main clause does the main Clause outweigh the N play sment here well let's wrap the sentence up even though he beats his dog presents it oh there's something wrong with Fred look at all this wonderful stuff about Fred and he still ends up beating his dog let's get him a psychiatrist okay so what's going on here what's going on here length makes a difference sup fare I think and I think the difference it makes is that length is an intensifier it adds to the message so you're sending an ambivalent message oh it gets really ambivalent when all the length gets dropped in there you're sending a really strong message one way or the other that gets really clear let's actually try this together or the next example the next ones are actually imagining reworking how might you use this and then we'll put one more thing okay let's imagine that you are a congress person from some districts and you've just voted on the very controversial MRX plan and if you want to say sequester go ahead whatever how and you voted in favor of it because you got your arm twisted by your party or whatever but your constituents are ambivalent about it what message do you want we just pretend that whatever Mr X is you decide we're NSF funding okay hey ray okay and your constituents you're not but you're not you you're a congress person okay your constituents are ambivalent about it what message do you want to send home that you're ambivalent right because if you if you look like you're a big booster of Mr X all the people who don't like it are going to feel that they've been shut out so you want to be ambivalent how do you do that you split your structures particularly want to bring all the people who are against Mr X but you want them to still vote for you and what do you set the best you can say to them I know I didn't like it either it's not but I know Mr X but I'm on your side take a look at G it yeah we should invest in the MRX plan even though the risks are high I know it sucks this is why you send me to Congress to make these hard decisions for us yeah it's probably ambivalent we're not a big fan of MRX yep okay let's try the next one and imagine you're a different Congress person from a different district and your district is in favor of MRX you have no problem with your vote what you're concerned about is it is only March of 2013 and the election is 2014 and at the end of the year and those risks could all blow up in your face between now and then so you want to get them in the record so that you've got a way to get elected my son does politics he says that's the first job of everybody in politics to get reelected okay and that was news to me as a scientist I said I guess that makes sense so what do you do you mention the risks but you don't want them to take over so how do we do that we subordinate them put them in subordinate clause early main clause at the end H even though the risks are high we should invest in the MRX plan I'm in favor of Mr X I'm your guy try third version you're different Congress person a different district not only is your district in favor of Mr X but it's the piece of pork they sent you to Washington to get so you are planning to ride the coattails of Mr X all the way to re-election in November of 2014 how do you want to come across as the biggest booster of MRX you want to emphasize support Mr X as many ways as you can put it in a main Clause but the main quads at the end and make that Clause longer than the other one you can already hear you know this you don't have to be writing scientific writing although it helps you'll be writing any kind of writing and this is going to matter look at I even though the risks are high we should draw upon whatever funds are available and invest in the MRX plan all right there we go now I said I'll make it a little more complicated you see those extra words and I draw upon whatever funds are available how many of you got the advice to omit needless words yeah I did too and if ever there were needless words those are needless words right I mean what other funds would we draw upon the ones that aren't available let's embezzle a little bit for MRX okay so so you know what why are those words there and this is one of these interesting moments it's the difference between I forgot my other key term structure and substance substantively those words are empty they don't add anything but structurally can you see what they do in terms of structure they're like ballast the weight that people would put in the base of a sailing vessel to keep the keel down and the rest of it up right there their ballast to make the main Clause the important clause to make clear what's being communicated all right one more twist and then we get to go to a breakout sessions I'm now I am NOT saying that structure is 100 percent and words are zero okay if you have a strong enough word it can carry the day for instance try this sentence although Fred's a nice guy he commits genocide now I'm going to guess then I ask you to judge Fred we're going to get a hundred percent thumbs down on Fred and it's not going to matter where we put them within the sentence you will be universal in your condemnation of Fred now but here's an interesting thing we're going to unpack this what happens in those situations is that the word carries the reader the readers judgment about the substance but it reflects on you it changes the way the reader judges the writer so let me just unpack what we just ever do it in slow motion and that you know this is a to just sort of hear how that sentence unfolds so bear with me starts off although what does it although say to you at the beginning of a sentence that that's something you were gonna get a subordinate clause with a main clause now we expect every sentence to have a main clause to tell the main story but this sentence begins with good morning readers I am the alt you were waiting for the main clause I am the although clause I'm going to trundle along for a while and tell you something after which you will find what you were looking for the main clause which is going to undo everything I just did right that's what that's what it although says to a reader every time you see it at the beginning of a sentence and if that's what the sentence does you're fine all right so although this is the although clause good morning Fred well this is a sentence about Fred it's Fred's story those of you who are there yesterday it's Fred's story right what is Fred's story is we're gonna label Fred what is Fred a nice guy stop there right Fred a nice guy with a little bit of a shadow behind him because fred has shown up in an although clause and we know something's going to happen in the next but he can't go buddy has bad breath but he dresses really really yeah something something is going to mess up Fred before the sentence is out okay here we go main Clause he oh it's still about Fred commits what does he commit adultery tax fraud you know you know it's bad but how bad genocide boom the whole thing blows up okay now let's change the structure let's change the structure although this is the although closet will be overturned by the main Clause Fred Fred's story tell me about Fred commits what does Fred commit genocide and you're all laughing because the mind says I understand all of those words but I do not understand that thought what do you mean although Fred commits genocide the instructions are to overturn this statement with something in the main clause and I don't get it and if you stumble along to the end of the main Clause he's a nice guy right this is not that nice guy anymore is it it's some other cono sarcastic or sardonic so the longer story that we woke with readers read linearly through time and they make judgments as they go and they met and so it order matters here okay let me give you your charge and it's actually good time to start handing out the second page oh yeah when I have the second page and hand up whoa thank you either okay because I'm going to start putting you what so so this business of how do you signal not only how do you deliver not only information but the judgment on that information this is something we do all the time and it's not just us anybody who's in a position of evaluating data people performance institutions and and then being responsible for communicating that judgment is in this business it's called being a professional professionals are paid to make judgments and to stand by them okay yes just one page don't worry I'll take whatever it's these two pages coming but there's they're two different handouts don't worry at NIH what they were faced with constantly was having to tell the guys upstairs who made the funding decisions and the principal investigator who wrote the grant what the judgment was on the grant and foremost grant while there were some grants that were so beautiful and so wonderful and so clearly going to work that there was nothing bad to say about them and there were also some grants that were like so badly put together or so ridiculous or so you know out there that they were never going to work and there was nothing good to say about them everybody else had good news and bad news right and NIH cut was struggling with how do we spread that out how do we not only say this is the good news and this is the bad news but how we weighed those against one another and because most of a structure is invisible rhetoric we don't notice it and so it made us things to us and we're not conscious of it except now you're starting to see structure and see what it does they didn't know how to do this so let me give you a few examples of what they had and then I'm going to put you into groups to rewrite some of the examples that you have so turn the page on the original handout so we're up to example number two okay here we go and I want you to imagine that this is your proposal you're the PI and this is the judgment that's come back this overall scope though it might prove to be overly ambitious is a great conceptual strength of the proposal how you feeling pretty good pretty good hey things are looking up why so now let's analyze that judgment why are you feeling so positive okay so whether P somebody give me one what's n placement okay the end of the Senate great conceptual strength of the proposal whoo-whoo that's really nice what else is telling you to be happy main clause the main clause says this overall scope is a great conceptual strength now this is a little bit of an aside because we haven't mentioned yet but where's the bad news in the middle it's between the subject and the verb and the main clause and I know I know that the American scientists article I wrote 20 years ago makes the rounds of Carnegie Mellon but something we talk about a lot in that article the position between the subject and the verb is a place that we just don't have a lot of attention available so they try to skip it and so this read says this overall scope though it might prove to be overly ambitious don't pay any attention to that is a great conceptual strength of the proposal and you might think oh isn't this the words no look at B although this overall scope is a great conceptual strength of the proposal it might prove to be overly ambitious how you doing you're gone right you are gone you are in this funding climate you will not get anywhere it's not the words it's the structure let's take a look at another one three this is an exciting but somewhat flawed application from a creative investigator how you doing so so isn't now this is this one I love because it's so it's such a puzzle until you take until you take it apart how many pieces of good news are there in that sentence - you are a creative investigator and the proposal is exciting how many pieces of bad news one it's flawed now is it grossly flawed is it a remedy flawed no it's just somewhat flawed so this is a little weird right we got two pieces of good news and we got one not so bad bad news but you can feel it in your stomach like this is not working something's wrong so what's wrong what's doing that what nope not the flaw the answer to all my quizzes should you ever meet me again is always structure structure okay you just you can just know that all right what's in this what's at the end of the sentence creative investigator that's good news but what would you really like empathize the most in this sentence exciting application because if after telling me that I'm creative and the application is the application is exciting and it's flawed and I want to emphasize that you're really creative you can already feel and this application is in big trouble it's the wrong good news at the end of the sentence so let's look at another version let me actually I will ask you I'll ask you to pretend you our NIH you our study section there are 30 you represent the 36 people around the table here's funding somewhere around 9% here's 50% where would you put a six yeah not you mean somewhere in the middle here my like and maybe there and I would say with big error bars like the next sentence this sounds a little confused and the next sentence might turn it around but you know we're not doing very well okay let's look at the next one be this creative investigator has produced an exciting but somewhat flawed application the message is a lot clearer right what the message the flaw is a problem so are we doing better or worse than in a worse but with very little error bars right so you know there's no we maybe somewhere in here but we're not you know I'm not sure we'd ever get up there here but it's a little a lot of variability now let's try see this creative investigator has produced a somewhat flawed but exciting application how you doing okay are we in the money no no cuz flaw hey flaw these days is flaw you're just not going to do it okay and that was before sequester okay well let's try D how do we get to see because the nth the emphasis at the end is on the exciting application and the flaw is buried in the middle so let's try D this is this creative investigator has produced a somewhat flawed but truly exciting application how you doing a little better are you in the money no but study section likes you and if there's any way to get you in the money they want them to do that right you as a P I you know that they're in favor of your work you just have to clean up the flaw and they'll be happy to fund you and upstairs maybe look put you in so D gets help not in the money but closer why why truly okay what's truly doing it's got it's a semantic cue it says the truth is exciting and we were it's also balancing the you know that we were slightly and now we're really what else is truly doing length because in order to minimize the flaw we had to add more words somewhat flaw that's better than flawed but it's more attention to flaw somewhat flawed but exciting somewhat flawed but exciting right and three syllables would be even better somewhat flawed but mmm exciting yeah okay we can hear this stuff you don't have to be a poet in fact I think scientists have this kind of sensitivity to language the poets have because our texts are so short okay let's do just a couple more and then I'm going to give you your charges cuz you're gonna do this because you can do it now here we go see actually we're gonna skip for let's get that one let's take a look at number five I guess while the hypothesis from this highly qualified investigator is novel stop there how are we doing little boy this is sounding like good news except novel is one of those like innovation lovely if they said it was innovative we'd be smiling but novel is the version of innovation that says we don't like what you're doing even though it seems to be new okay and it's a subordinate clause so whatever is happening up here is going to get overturned by the main cause so this sounds like good news but it's good news that makes us go oh I'm not so sure here comes the main clause the rationale is poorly justified ooh the studies lack the input of an expert in epidemiology whoo and a more similar approach should be used first to assess the validity of the primary hypothesis with preliminary data and reduction in cost and risk to the experimental subjects how are we doing we are dead we are this is like do not we submit this not in this form we got a main clause we've got we've got the main clause at the end we've got all this length we've got three main clauses and they keep repeating and what's the last word risk to experimental subjects this is a crash and burn okay all right so here's your assignment I want and it's going to have to roll in a little bit in pieces I want you to find no more than four people to work with so introduce yourselves the people around you and what I'm going to do is I'm going to give each group of maximum five and really don't make it more than five because it's too easy to coast if you gave the groups to lodge you'll sit and listen and you have to participate what came around in the set and the handout that the not the takeaway one but the other one is a bunch of sentences mostly from NIH but not entirely and I'm going to give each group two sentences to rewrite so let me give you the charge and then you can get into groups and I'll tell you which sentences to work on and it doesn't matter where big enough group does they'll all get covered your instructions is as a group to revise your sentences each one twice once to make the judgment on these facts more favorable once to make the judgment on these same facts the data are going to stay the same more negative so I want you to do that by varying the structure which Clause is at the end what information is in the main Clause what information is in the end clause how much length do you have you know is a re what are you repeating what gets if if you repeat anything I don't want you to invent new words to change it you'll have to change the words as you move things around so this is not you can't change the words at all but context controls meaning so you can always change how we interpret this by telling us all these other things I don't want you to do that I want you to discover what structure does for you because one of the things that will come out of this experience is that we tend to recognize structural problems in our gut and then try to solve them by throwing words at them and words cannot undo a problem of structure yeah our last example where we were funding this project oh but that structure oh no what three yep plot and play right now okay we're going to be on D we're going to be really close they were really close because plah is one of these things it's hard to get funded these days of your flawed D is getting as close as we can get given that there is a flaw and so it says most favorable watch I don't think it's the word sokka's watch what happens and thank you because I forgot to do this little twist you you feel like it's truly and the truly is the thing that's pushing it up or the flaws doing it let's drop truly into a okay remember a on that one this is a truly exciting but somewhat flawed application from a creative investigator it just sounds incoherent now right you know like I don't know the guy at NIH needs a vacation the sentence doesn't make any sense how can the application be truly exciting and somewhat flawed it whereas with D we can see what they're pushing it up they can't make the flaw go away that's right so yeah no no you work with strong but you just can't do anything with structure he's still not going to know it's not that you can you cannot do it's not that you cannot do anything with structure we move to the judgment all over the place you can't get it funded with flaw thank you okay so that's that's part of the charge if the sentence you're working with once you make all the structural changes that you can still is just you can't get it to be positive or you can't get it to be negative because the words are so powerful if you have the scientific equivalent of genocide which flaw these days might be okay know that we just we just can't get through anymore then you can change that word but I want you to not start by changing the words our instinct is to go and to change the words and if you put different word in the same structure you will deliver the same message except it will get less coherent so that's the charge would you please hide yourselves in groups of no more than five call it my program going meta to talk through what we did and why it works because part of what we did is you're not imagining readers you had them all around you yet strangers telling you what they thought and did you all agree immediately no no that's really really useful okay so I want to go through these and what I'm going to do is that I'm going to read the original sentence because every groups only looked at a couple of them and and sometimes give a little commentary on and then I'm going to ask for the revisions and I'm going to ask for somebody who had six give me a positive somebody give me a negative what happens sometimes now we'll see if this why I want to leave 15 full minutes to do it given the size of the room is that something to say all we had more or less the same thing yeah we don't want to hear more or less if it's if it's exactly the same words then we'll skip you but if you had a slightly different version for your positive then let's listen to that because we're going to evaluate is that are the positives indeed more positive than the original and if we have four positives do we can we see any pattern there can we learn anything from the variations in that as well okay ready here we go first sentence six this current research effort by this investigator has been in progress now for more than six years stop there with that good news or bad news it's hard to tell it's you know and the engineers around us are like six years I mean really where's the one of the venture capital has gone elsewhere it's interesting so if that feels neutral at best now I want to point this out because one of the hardest things for readers to do is to undo a judgement that they've made so we get that first clause and what kind of it's a main clause right with the main point and the main point we think is neutral at best and may be negative hmmm onward but okay here comes the qualifier unfortunately though what do we just learn that that was the good news and hahaha so this is a terrible sentence right most readers are reading it and that looks neutral the best thing you can you'll see the guys that worked on number six we're like where's the good news it was it there but but we what we are reluctant to reinterpret and this is a longer conversation about trying to get the default first interpretation to be the one that you want the reader readers are interpreting they're working hard you don't want to be the second interpretation the second reading they won't get there okay but unfortunately the productivity of the many studies has been disappointing and everybody who is working on this I told had to think Human Genome Project or mapping the mouse brain I think that's actually what it was you know one of these 10 or 12 year projects and we're in year six and this is true okay something to give me a more positive version of six thanks yeah same facts much more positive so now many studies is is something that we're emphasizing oh yeah they're really busy aren't they and six years yeah what's the structural changing that this group made they change the order of the clauses yeah you took them in front the main clause was early you put it at the end by starting with a subordinate clause with despite somebody else who made it more positive okay okay now is that more positive than the original a little bit because the end placement is on been in progress for more than 68 why are we and you guys can with why are we ambivalent about that nope nope you're getting into the words what's the structure yes you kept the buts you kept the ambivalent structure of main clause early and placement subordinate clause and because there's a slight emphasis people are a little more inclined to emphasize what's at the end even if it's subordinate this is more positive than the original but we want to go even more positive although the productivity of many studies has been disappointing they've been added now for more than six years okay and now we can hear he's aware about six years but they know that somebody had to save the human genome project come on all right somebody else have in there what she had would you read it with yours again thank you yep yeah so what you've done lovely you change the order of the information so the good news is at the end but you didn't change the order of the structure of the two clauses and so that and you hear how that makes it different so we've got great it and this is why this NIH really found this useful because you can start to spread people out yeah do you always have are you always defending things okay right now I want to flag this though because think that we're not again we're not going to go much into writer process versus readers but think about how we write which clause are you likely to write first the main clause right and the positive or the clause that you want to emphasize most this is really good although there is this problem this is really horrible although I guess we could consider it this way you hear how we're going to spontaneously probably produce the ambivalent structure when we think we're communicating a strong message one way or the other so yeah and you will see that if this is where people get hung up then you might find that you might need to change that you actually do mostly want to say you know this is what I think but you've been using a structure that's not letting you as much okay how about making more negative wasn't that fun making all these a little more negative well schadenfreude here yeah okay somebody another group that we haven't heard from despite six years of research effort yes so we're not even giving words with the despite despite is different from although because the despite says hey we're pushing again it's subordinated and pushing away you got rid of the clause there's no verb use that despite six years of research effort support main Clause weighs more than subordinate clause clause may it weighs more than phrase that's structure we know this in our bones but now you've got it in you know the conscious part somebody else with a negative okay so it structure makes a difference there now all of these are playing one against the other one more year since was the closest to do this this research effort by this investigator has been in progress now for more than six years and the fraud the productivity of the many studies has been disappointed yeah yeah and it gets much more negative so we've lost the good news we've lost the we've lost the choose clause and said our balancing each other and contradicting each other look it's a sound board you control the levers you sure unfortunately this research has been enough artists now for more than six years and if somebody told me several years ago Fred still beats his dog okay let's do number seven overall however this proposal is scientifically sound but there is no innovation I mean how many reversals can you do in a nine word sentence but however is reversing the previous sentence by saying it's scientifically found and then it reverses itself and you really do want to send the SRA on vacation so how did let's have a group that made this more positive try how about back here okay another group that's more positive yeah Oh marvelous now let's compare those two they're both much more positive is there a difference between them which one do you think which one is the most positive the second one why because not only is the no innovation subordinated but it's shoved in that position between the subject and the verb that says don't pay any attention to me yeah yeah so that's and that that's in the American scientist article yeah I'm actually not but I don't wanna make it a rule so readers expect the subject to be followed immediately by the verb and they would like to put the two of them together because that's structure anything between the subject and the verb will be read with less attention and less and given less importance it's not a good place to put a lot of complicated information but it's a wonderful place to parenthetically say oh yeah and the way I think of this one there were thirty people around the table this was a great proposal everybody was really happy and then that said you know I'm a little concerned about the productivity and the Sr I thought okay now I have to write something about productivity and everybody else at the table rolled their eyes and the SRA got them okay productivity has to get mentioned in a place where you won't pay much attention to it because that which separates the subject and the verb is arriving when readers have no energy to process it so it if you put verbs at the end of your sentences with long sentences before then we can't make sense of them but that's different from I haven't had a chance to say this yet I have one rule for talking about writing okay we are doing epistemology we're making truth claims we're trying to tell the stories of things that cannot speak for themselves and we have to pay attention and that will be and that I think is more important than making your English teacher whoever it was happy with your sentence so I don't want to turn I don't want to turn it into rules the rules will fail they will fail if we had more time I could give you a set of expectations that contradict one another and you'd say what do I do to get it right you get it it's right it's delivering the message you want to send to the majority of your readers okay let's make so anybody wanted that we had two positives anybody have enough different positive that push that a little further I think you guys did on innovation okay but what I've heard is no innovation yeah and did you the guys have worked with this did you feel like no innovation was a problem yeah you got it had like not terribly innovative not as innovative as it could be or there's not much innovation no innovation you sort of why are we reading this okay how about making more negative yeah down here yeah we're done right all those varieties we found there's no innovation great onward to the next proposal we're finished it spritz really clear that the innovation is the issue main clause at the end it all works okay let's take a look at the next one because I don't want I do want to let you go is for pub number eight for publications have been produced in the last funding period but they are not focused on the three specific aims in the previous proposal now I think this one's pretty ambivalent and its original and I think that was true study section was struggling you know really productive but back with the same grant how did you make it more positive somebody who worked on this we can just stop within the last funding that's more positive even though not focus for publications produced in the last planning period somebody else okay so this is taking bad news and subordinating in the middle of sentence also positive somebody else okay so again you're getting it this this idea of taking what if you want to sway one way or they are they subordinate the information that you want to de-emphasize and open up space with a main clause at the end for the information you want to emphasize which words would you like to emphasize most for publications so let me give you another variation on this it gets into other issues that we didn't call although they did not focus on the three specific aims of the previous proposal in the last funding period the investigators produced four publications it's the same words right it's the same words but we ended on the for publications instead of in the last funding period all right let's how about making more negative more negative somebody who have that time somebody who had set at eight for negative come on yeah even though their formal vacations were reduced they were not focused on the three specific games that's a problem that means it's clear that study section thinks that's a problem you might not agree with them particularly to the PI but but you know what they think somebody else with a negative yeah thank you okay so you got the in the last fun in the last funding period out it makes it and kept the structure that's here because you've got a main clause early and then the subordinate clause at the end so change but even getting the in the last funding period out upfront that helps to make it a little more negative okay cool let's take a look at nine a series of indole derivatives have been reported to be melatonin antagonists although information on the method used for such classification is not provided sort of like well what are we going to do with this fact I don't know and if you think I bet my job I'm not supposed to make judgment here just this is what I find that's not what you get paid for okay in the gum coming up how do you make it more positive somebody who had this one okay so we're starting to like this structure of I want to hide something and put it between them and it might be too long you can hear how is it starting to get longer you look like I'm going to piety between the subject the verb maybe I want to chip down but it's definitely more definitely stronger somebody else how many us most happens yeah okay okay good so you addict so you played with length as well as structure whoo whoo so we've got two claws we've got two verbs here one is reported in one is classification and reporting sounds like you know they've reported something but we don't believe them although there's nothing about the method a series of Endel derivatives have been classified as this we're much less suspicious it's a different verb that's lovely how about making more negative someone yeah thank you yes how do I think well it's not that different but you can hear that that there's a problem that you didn't provide it I'm labeling that negative by putting it in that position and if I'm if I'm study section or something else you can't talk to me unless you give me these details this is this is one of the problems let's look at 10 this is a very short application with little experimental detail by two new investigators who are very well trained in Mouse genetics and this strikes you as a funny sentence it is how about making it more positive okay so we're subordinating it's deciding the problem is it short with little details subordinate clause early main clause they're very well trained in Mouse genetics so anybody else have something remarkably different from that yeah okay it can hear it right your I can snore while you're all nodding this has been a great two hours you hear things you can see them you can control them fabulous how about a negative well I've heard you everybody else with negatives yeah I know these are the organizers I've known for too long ooh right that's a punch that's a punch they show that you know although you're really smart and very well trained your application is ridiculous okay now context controls meaning so we're going to go back to the question flow and so we're looking at sentences in isolation because I asked you to be I want you to play with the structure and within that we had enough context you're thinking about NIH to play with that structure I can make number 10 a terrible sentence without changing a single word you ready I'm going to give you the context what do you suppose was the subject of this grant application Mouse genetics right you can see that the emphasis is on they are very well trained in Mouse genetics we say yeah Mouse genetics rule guess what I'll give you truth what was the application on human genetics how are they doing and not so good they were in the 999th percentile okay and that's how I found this it but this is a really so the last twist you say you know what do people know that yes they know this does this sentence sound like a 99th percentile sentence there's no shame in that it's very shortly experimental d it's sort of flat yeah it's only if you're the PI and you know that your variable that you're that you are that the project's on human genetics and emphasis is on Mouse genetics at that moment you know what happened and I think there's a covert message in here that says hey guys guys we know who you are you come from really good labs we expect good things of you and we know you're smart but you have done the classic newbies mistake you have written a proposal out of field without sufficient experimental detail to justify it and rather than excoriating them because they think you know you're really smart you're going to get it as soon as you show this to anybody and clearly you didn't show it to anyone until you send it to us okay but rather than say oh you idiots they say hey here's this thing here's the score and now you know what the problem is what what's the implicit instruction elaborate you've got room resubmit and what will the and this is a implicit not guarantee but almost a promise here that says when you resubmit what we'll study sections right this application is dramatically improved over the first submission and these very talented investigators and if you've actually got the story you're going to go for it I'm not now you might feel uncomfortable that I'm asking you to make up stories about your data you're tied to your data and I'm going to trust that you're faithful to your data but your data don't speak that they cannot speak you have to go figure out what do you believe you are allowed to claim on the basis of these data that's number one you must choose there is no neutral sentence every sentence sends instructions and if the instructions are I have no instructions then the message is and I'm incompetent don't listen to me okay you want to be an expert you're getting a PhD or master's degree okay that's you're being paid for expertise you must make up your mind what you think you must communicate that to yourself and others clearly and then what you all did here so beautifully you have to listen to what your readers say there will be arguments science is contentious it's difficult we see the same thing and we interpret it differently I want those arguments to be about the substance and we can't argue about the substance if the structure fails to transmit that substance clearly to us that's your job you need you need to decide what your facts are and then speak for them that's whether you're talking to your other scientists but especially when you are talking to everyone else okay the more you listen to readers you'll see in my takeaways one of my things is listen to readers they are always right the reasons they give you for what they think don't listen to those okay because they don't have unless they have the language they say you know let's feel sort of neutral Demeter's let me say why are they saying that being structured they won't think structure but think structure change the structure and then ask the reader is this better and they'll say yeah I thought history a friend of mine is a history of science professor writing this paper there were three sentences and she thought I was magic because ivory were three sentences where I could see ambivalence and everything around it suggested that she was not antolín she's writing about rosalind Franklin it's treatment by Jim Watson I don't think she was ambivalent but all those sentences were ambivalent I said do you mean this and we quickly did Fred miss jog and she said no and I knew those sentences were bothering me and no matter what words I put in them they stayed they stayed troublesome said right because the words can't change the structure great you've done a nice piece of work thank you all very much amazing presentation and I'm happy to take questions I've just it is 703 and some of you have your rumbling stomachs anybody who needs to clear out of here should do so I'm happy to talk to answer questions so if there's anything left in the back please do feel free to grab it on your way out there are also a bunch of handouts from the GCC and from us and Rudy's handouts if you haven't gotten those and you can check out our website as I mentioned earlier for more information about PTR thanks for coming up thanks so much for coming guys that was fun yeah I assigned you this right it was the right one with the right one to do yeah I was Harvard that was fun

Channel: Public Communication for Researchers

Views: 298,246

Rating: 4.9350462 out of 5

Keywords: PCR, Research, Science, Public communication, Science communication, Carnegie Mellon University, CMU, Judy Swan, Science Writing, Lecture, Writing

Id: jLPCdDp_LE0

Length: 85min 48sec (5148 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2013