Schimel - Writing Science

Highlights from Joshua Schimel's book "Writing Science - How to Write Papers that Get Cited and Proposals that Get Funded"

This book is really useful because it includes a variety of examples to demonstrate the ideas presented. What I'm doing here is highlighting some of its main ideas but nothing replaces the experience of reading it front to back.

Chapter 1. Writing in Science

• You don't succeed as a scientist by getting papers published. You succeed as a scientist by getting them cited.

• ...the leaders in varius fields - most write exceptionally well. They are able to cast their ideas in language that is clear and effective and that communicate to a wide audience.

• Good, clear writing -writing that teaches and informs without confusion- emerges from a process of struggle, or if you prefer, litigation. (Scott Montgomery, The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science)

• As a scientist, you are a professional writer... and ... even the most successful writers struggle with writing.

• It is the author's job to make the reader's job easy.

• If you recognize that as a scientist you are a professional writer, you will continually work on perfecting your craft.

• Writing can be a painful process of rewriting, rewriting and more rewriting until your work gets good enough to send off. ... If you are going to be a successful writer, learn to embrace the pain and enjoy the process.

Chapter 2. Science Writing as Storytelling

• A paper doesn't only present our data -it also interprets them.

• The papers that get cited the most and the proposals that get funded are those that tell the most compelling stories.

• To tell a good story in science, you must assess your data and evaluate the possible explanations -which are most consistent with existing knowledge and theory? The story grows organically from the data and [it] is objective, dispassionate, and fully professional. Where you run into problems is when the authors know the story they want to tell before they collect the data and then try to jam those data into that framework.

• Science is often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented in the public arena and in policy decisions... Ensuring that science is used properly requires more than just presenting facts to decision makers.

• In looking for the story, remember [...] that our ultimate goal is not the data we collect but the understanding we derive from them... The role of scientists is to collect data and transform them into understanding.

• The raw data that come from an instrument need to be converted into information, which is then transformed into knowledge, which in turn is synthesized and used to produce understanding. [...] The further along the path from data to understanding you can take your work and your papers, the more people will be able to assimilate your contributions and use them to motivate their own work and ideas -and that should be your goal.

• [...] only by exploring the boundaries and limits of your data can you find the important story.

• So listen to your characters carefully -take the time to hear what they have to say and figure out what they mean. Fight the pressure to publish prematurely. One good paper can launch a career; many mediocre ones build a rather different one. Think well, write well, and then think some more while you write. Let the story grow from the data and then structure the paper to tell the story.

Chapter 3. Making a story sticky

Chip and Dan Heath identify six factors that make an idea sticky and organize it in a mnemonic SUCCES (Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories)

• Simple: Ideas that stick tend to be simple (not simplistic). A simple idea contains the core essence of an important idea in a clear compact way. Simple ideas have power. Part of being simple is expressing your thoughts in language that builds off ideas that your readers already know.

• Unexpected: Novelty and unexpectedness lie in the questions you ask and the interpretations you develop. In science, the key to highlighting the unexpected is through the knowledge gap theory described by Heath and Heath. Your work should identify the unknown within the mass of knowledge that exists in your field. By highlighting that unknown , identifying ignorance in the midst of knowledge, you create the unexpectedness and engage a reader's curiosity.

• Concrete: Simple has power, but concrete adds mass to that power. Scientists are drawn to the middle of the ladder of abstraction and as a result, we often write papers that are accessible to only a limited group of readers. [...] you can minimize the damage by grounding and defining your specific concepts either in widely understood schemas or in the details that explain the abstractions. By linking a concept to a concrete example, the concept itself becomes concrete.

• Credible: Credibility goes hand in hand with being concrete. We establish the credibility of our ideas by grounding them in previous work and citing sources. We establish the credibility of our data by describing our methods, presenting the data clearly, and using appropriate statistics. We establish the credibility of our conclusions by showing that they grow from those credible data. We build a chain that extends from past work into future directions. A break anywhere in that chain makes the whole endeavor lose credibility.

• Emotional: To do good science you must be dispassionate and objective about your work. There is, however, one emotion that is not only acceptable in science but fundamental to it: Curiosity. Unexpected things create curiosity, so use the link to your benefit. [...] Excitement about an idea is a second acceptable emotion in science, and it grows from curiosity. We get excited about work that engages and then satisfies our curiosity.

• Stories: To write a good paper, you need to think about internal structure and how to integrate story modules. [...] As you discuss your data and ideas, find units that you can package into coherent modules. Readers will be able to assimilate each piece, and it will be easier for them to see how they add up to create the whole.

Chapter 4. Story structure

There are four elements that underlie the structure of all stories: Opening, Challenge, Action, Resolution... Understanding the common elements, the ways you can put them together, and when each structure works provides a powerful tool for approaching different writing challenges.

• Opening: the introduction, justification, the context of the story you are about to present

• Challenge: the question to be addressed

• Action: the methodology (either what you did -in a paper- or what you are about to do -in a proposal-)

• Resolution: the conclusion of your work

The OCAR structure is the one used in journal articles because readers are patient. They are willing to know your whole story as long as it is interesting. You should be able to read the O, C, and R of a paper, and still get its key points.

In proposals, the structure is Action, Background, Develoment, Climax and Ending (ABDCE). This is frequently used by modern fiction writers and scientific proposal writers: you need to get the reader exited about your story before you showed them the rest of it. ABDCE front-loads the story by moving the challenge up and collapsing it into the opening to create the initial "action" - and exiting start to grab your attention.

• Action: Start with a dramatic action to immediately engage readers and entice them to keep reading

• Background: Give the context and settings of your story

• Development: Follow the action as the story develops to the climax

• Climax: Bring all the threads of the story together and address them

• Ending: the conclusion of your work (same as the resolution)

A good paper or proposal describes the larger problem and central "characters" (O); it frames an interesting question (C); it presents your research plan and results, developing the action (A); and leaves the reader with and important conclusion about how our understanding of the world has changed as a result of the work (R).

A proposal must convince reviewers that the topic identified in the opening is important and them compel them with the excitement of the questions posed in the challenge. If it fails to do this, it is dead. -Make sure the Introduction of the proposal is excellent if you want to get it accepted.

While the IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Conclusions) is a rule, the OCAR is a principle. Depending on the Journal or the type of publication, the IMRaD may have some variations however, every single work must have the OCAR elements. How to map OCAR into IMRaD?

1. Introduction: contains the opening, the background, and the challenge

   • Opening: Typically the first paragraph that introduces the larger problem the work is targeting (what is the context and what are the characters we are studying?)

   • Background: an extension of the "O". What information does the reader need to understand the specific work the authors are proposing (or did), why it is important and what it will contribute to the larger issue?

   • Challenge: What are the specific hypotheses, questions, goals of the current work?

2. Materials and Methods: Description of the Action (what did you do or plan to do?)

3. Results: Continues de Action by describing your findings (or expected results and limitations)

4. Discussion: Develops the climax of the resolution. What did it all mean and what have you learned? it often ends with a conclusion subsection that is the resolution.

Scientific papers have an hourglass shape to their content. They open with a problem of wide interest; then, they narrow down to a set of very specific questions; the methods and results stay narrow; as results are discussed, the context of the story expands towards conclusions that are more general and connect back to the problem developed in the opening.

Chapter 5. The Opening

• Your first words are key and you should use them to accomplish three goals: (1) identify the problem, (2) introduce the characters, (3) target an audience.

• Avoid an opening that results in misdirection or no direction at all - using an opening that explains a widely held schema is a flaw common with inexperienced writers. You need to revise your draft, figure out where the real story starts, and delete the rest.

• You must know the intended audience to tailor the writing to them. When you target experts in your field, you can open quickly, building off the discipline's core schemas. However, if your target is a broader audience, you need to open with an issue that engages your target audience but then modulate it to one you want to work with.

• You need to adapt your language, style, and approach to deal with different audiences and media.

• Frame your opening to promise the story you will deliver.

• You can start a paper with a strong statement that dives in to take control of the story.

• To write well, you need to learn how to use the power of the opening. "Well begun is half done."

Chapter 6. The Funnel - Connecting Opening and Challenge

• The opening of a paper identifies a large problem, while the challenge defines a specific question. The main body of the Introduction must connect these elements. This process has the purpose of framing in the knowledge gap.

• A good introduction defines a problem and narrows to an interesting question. A weak or poor Introduction, in contrast, either fails to define the problem or tries to sell a solution before defining the problem.

  • You must explicitly define the problem. A concrete statement that defines a small knowledge gap will do better than a fuzzy one that fails to define one.

  • Authors sometimes end up taking the problem for granted and focus on their solution. If you are trying to sell a solution, first you must convince the reader that there is a problem.

    • Open with a concern many people share, then, show why a solution is needed and finally, introduce the "product" (the challenge).

• Introduction vs. literature review:

  • An effective introduction cannot be merely a literature review that synopsizes what we know about a topic.

  • Instead, because you must convince readers of the importance of the problem, you must show them what is not known and why that is important.

  • A literature review builds a solid wall -describing knowledge- whereas an Introduction focuses on the hole in that wall -describing ignorance.

  • An Introduction focuses on the publications that define the edges, rather than the core of knowledge.

  • One clear flag for when your are doing a literature review is when your citations are at the beginning of sentences. This is telling a story about and not about nature and how it works.

  • Ask yourself whether the researcher, rather than the research, is what you want to talk about. If not, rewrite and focus on the findings. Doing this will help you tighten up the arguments and sharpen the knowledge gap.

  • The background is never a place for a data dump where you tell everything about the field. If a piece of information does not have a specific and concrete role in moving the story forward, it does not need to be included.

• The vital elements of an Introduction are the opening and the challenge. Those are the "dots" that you need to connect by filling in the background and forming the funnel.

  • That material has only one purpose: to show a reader why answering your questions is essential to making progress on the overall problem.

  • By the time readers reach the challenge, they should feel that your questions are the obvious ones, even if they had never thought about them before.

Chapter 7. The Challenge

• In the challenge, you describe the specific knowledge you hope to gain.

  • Starts with the question that drove you to do the research. The question always comes first and must be clear;

  • From the questions, we sometimes formulate a hypothesis;

  • Finally, we usually state specific objectives. Some authors only pose the question while others do all three.

• Focusing on objectives instead of questions is weak science and weak storytelling. If you leave the question unstated and implicit, and jump straight to objectives, the reader has to figure out how your work will advance knowledge (remember that it is the author's job to make the reader's job easy).

• After posing the question, lay out the research approach by telling the specific objectives and the information you will generate. A good challenge almost always condenses conceptually to "to learn X, we did Y".

Chapter 8. Action

• Action in a paper includes the Materials and Methods, the Results, and most of the Discussion. In a proposal it is the description of what you intend to do.

• You are not just presenting your results, you are telling a story... Without embedding the action within the larger story, the paper easily becomes aimless, incoherent, and dull. Ask yourself these questions: What is the point of all that work? What do the results mean? Do they answer your question? Do they support your hypotheses and conclusions?

• By integrating the action into the story, you give it structure and direction. You help the reader work through the results to figure out what they mean and how they fit together.

• Regarding the Methods:

  • A paper must offer a detailed explanation of procedures. To serve the needs of all possible readers, the best way to describe a method is use a lead/development structure (LD), providing an initial overview for all and then the details for those who need them.

  • Tapping into established schemas helps to streamline the methods (cite the well-known approach or method).

• Regarding Results and Discussion

  • The decision of keeping results and discussion together (or separate) depends on the fields and journals your aiming. However, you have to remember to make the reader's job easy and clearly distinguishing what you found from what you think.

  • Make sure to differentiate your data, your inferences (clear and robust interpretations of the data), and your interpretations (your thoughts, hypotheses and speculations about what the results may mean for the larger problem you identified.

    • While it is always essential to distinguish results from discussion of them, it isn't critical to separate them physically. As an author, you decide which approach best fits your field and best serves your story.

• Regarding the Data

  • The most important decision is not how to present your data but which data to present. Be strategic and leave the rest in appendices or supplementary information.

  • The next decision is how to present your data. You need to synthetsize them into a pattern and fit them into the larger story to provide context. You do this by telling a short story about each data set with a clear opening to introduce and frame the presentation.

    • Most results call for and LD structure: first frame the major point or pattern, then flesh out the detail.

  • Although statistics are essential for establishing the credibility of your conclusions, remember that the story is not in the statistics -it is in the data themselves.

    • By focusing on the data and making the statistics supporting information, you can tell a story that says more about nature and is more engaging without forgoing rigor.

• Regarding the Discussion

  • Discussion is where you present your thoughts and interpretations, where you answer the questions you posed in the challenge, and where you show your contribution to the larger problem framed in the opening.

  • Writing a good Discussion is the critical act of creativity in science that no book can teach.

  • The discussion needs to build toward the resolution of the paper, but as a section it should develop a story on its own and have a coherent structure.

    • Some writers use an OCAR structure, opening by reminding readers of the challenge and the question, and then working through to the resolution. Other papers use an LDR structure, opening the Discussion by framing the conclusion -what they showed- and then using the rest of the Discussion to support the argument, building to the overall resolution.

    • Both OCAR and LDR work well for the Discussion. Of the two, LDR is more common; some books even say it is the "right" way to write the Discussion.

Chapter 9. The Resolution

• Endings are power positions. Your resolution should be your "take-home message", your strongest and most memorable words.

• A good resolution shows us how our understanding of nature has advanced, and by offering new insights into the problem identified in the opening, it wraps up the story.

• A resolution shows how the starting point has moved forward. A good resolution achieves this by stepping backward through OCAR: it reiterates the action, answers the questions raised in the challenge, and demonstrates how these answers contribute to the larger problem.

• Ending with a concrete NEW question engages a reader's curiosity and can be a powerful way to resolve a paper.

• Bad resolutions can be weak, distracting, or, at worst, actively undermine your conclusions.

  • Weak resolutions fail to frame the conclusions. In this type of ending, authors usually synopsize their results and then tell you that they are important, but don't clarify how--they don't answer the questions they were asking and don't synthesize their information into knowledge.

  • Some papers conclude with material that is distracting--ideas that should be in the introduction or is already in textbooks and that neither synopsizes nor synthesizes the results.

  • The worst possible way to end a paper is to actively undermine your conclusions by saying something like "more research is needed to clarify our findings". Resolving a paper this way focuses on what you haven't accomplished.

• Your resolution should do three things:

  • Synopsize the key results

  • Synthesize those results -- show how they answer your question

  • Show how these results contribute to solving the larger problem.

• In proposals, make space for a resolution paragraph that encapsulates the proposal, reiterates the big issue, and explains how the components work together to address it--Make the final pitch for why the proposal should be funded.

Chapter 10. Internal structure

• The flow of opening, development, and resolution --building and then rewarding curiosity-- creates a story's arc. Scientific writing is successful when it creates that flow and that arc.

• A story doesn't have just a single overall arc, but a hyerarchical structure, with small arcs nested within larger ones, ultimately creating the whole. A good story works when this hyerarchical structure works.

• Creating arcs compartmentalizes your thoughts and makes them manageable. When writing lacks clear story arcs, it becomes an incoherent mass with no obvious direction, no internal structure, and no points of clear emphasis.

• To ensure that your final pieces have an effective internal structure, go over them, paragraph by paragraph, and section by section, and ask the following questions (all of them need to be checked):

  • Does each unit make a single, clear point?

  • When several paragraphs together form a section, are the linkages among them clear?

  • Has every extraneous thought that breaks the serial arc structure been removed?

  • When you introduce a topic, do you resolve that discussion before introducing a new topic?

  • Is every major unit of the work defined by either a subhead or clear opening text?

Chapter 11. Paragraphs

• A paragraph becomes a unit of composition when it tells a complete short story with a coherent structure, a story that fits into and contributes to the larger work.

• Each paragraph needs an opening that sets the stage, and each needs to resolve by making a point, but those don't have to be either a single sentence or the first sentence.

• For choosing a structure, the most important decision is whether to make a point and then develop it, producing an LD structure (Topic sentence-development, TS-D model), or to build to a conclusion, producing an OCAR or LDR structure. (Joseph Williams - Toward Clarity and Grace- distinguishes these as "point-first" versus "point-last" paragraphs.

  • A point-first or TS-D is simple, clean, and works well for most jobs. It should dominate your writing (in this type of paragraph you make a point and then flesh it out).

  • If you need to assemble an argument, pulling threads together to weave them into a conclusion, you are producing a point-last structure which can be LDR or OCAR.

    • An LDR paragraph opens with an argument and then develops it, similar to an LD paragraph, but then it wraps up with a synthesis: it's strong at both opening and resolution.

    • An OCAR structure introduces the issue in the opening sentence without framing an argument -it just sets the stage. the last sentence synthesizes the material to make the conclusion.

• Point-last paragraphs are not terribly common; they might account for 25-30 percent of a paper.

• Writing is dominated by point-first paragraphs, particularly by TS-D, which is the bread-and-butter paragraph.

• Anytime you come across a paragraph that seems too long, too rambling, or too incoherent, you need to look for the story arcs and elements, and restructure or break up the paragraph to highlight them.

• Regarding paragraph lenght, short is better than long but you should take the space necessary to frame critical ideas.

• The key to writing good paragraphs, and fixing bad ones, is the same as for other writing problems. Identify (1) who the story is about, (2) your point, and (3) where you should make it. Put the critical pieces of information in the right places, and use the rest of the text to tie them together smoothly.

Chapter 12. Sentences

• You can't write strong papers with weak sentences.

• Basic principles of story structure apply to sentences. Readers need to meet the characters (opening), learn what they did (action), and what the outcome was (resolution).

• Good sentences present the OCAR elements in the most convenient order possible, establishing a framework and then placing the new information into it, allowing readers to process each piece of information in turn.

• Opening: the topic. Whatever you put at the beginning of a sentence, readers interpret as the topic: who or what the sentence is about. Because the topic presents the context for what is to come, it should be a schema or character that readers are familiar with, either because it is common knowledge or because you introduced it earlier.

• Resolution: the stress. Endings are always power positions -last words carry the greatest weight. In a multiclause sentence, the ending of each clause is a minor stress position. Use the power of the stress by putting key words there -the main message and new ideas or terms.

• You must put the right information in the right place if you want the readers to get your intended point. You must choose which story you want to tell and structure your sentences accordingly.

• The weighting of words in a sentence follows a consistent order: the stress carries the greatest emphasis, the topic is next, and the middle carries the least.

• The verb (the action) should immediately follow the sentence's subject. Avoid breaking that connection.

• The key to writing complex sentences is holding their structure together. Topic, action, and stress need to be well chosen and well placed.

• To strenghten a sentence, you need to either delete extra words or move them into the middle, thereby shifting the important words into the stress position.

• Characteristics of a good sentence:

  • The topic should be short and clear

  • The main verb should follow it immediately

  • The key message should come at the stress.

• Good, clear sentences can be short or long. The key to writing a good long sentence is holding together the structure but straight OCAR won't work. If readers have to wait until the end of the sentence to get the point, they will get lost.

  • To make a good long sentence, you need to use an LD structure: make the key point in a short initial main clause, and then add others that add depth and nuance (to specify or detail particularities).

Chapter 13. Flow

• When you write a paragraph, the opening sets the theme. As long as every sentence has a topic that fits into that theme, the paragraph will hang together. All paragraphs need this kind of thematic coherence.

  • to carry readers through, sentences need to link seamlessly to each other. Each sentence must tell a coherent story, but each must also function within a paragraph, advancing the larger story.

  • The link between sentences should be "stress-to-topic" (the stress of the previous sentence turns into the topic of the next one). Topic-to-topic links makes just a list of ideas that don't flow.

• Although a paragraph break indicates that you are shifting ideas and moving into a new story arc, readers expect the new paragraph to build off the previous one, developing a larger story. Use the same strategies (stress-topic or resolution-opening) to make them connect.

Chapter 14. Energizing Writing

• Within a sentence, showing action is the job of verbs and it's an important job. Good writers use their verbs well, imbuing their papers with life.

• There are many ways to overburden your writing: using passive voice unnecessarily, using fuzzy verbs, and nominalizations.

• Passive voice:

  • Passive voice is powerful because it allows you to control who or what, in a sentence, the story is about.

  • Passive voice weakens the story structure with unnecessary elements.

  • Active voice forces you to make an actor and action clear. Passive voice is an effective tool when you need to say what happened and not who did it.

  • Passive voice is for when you need to make the acted-on the subject of the sentence or when you have an honest reason to avoid naming the actor. Use it for those jobs. Otherwise, use the active voice.

• Fuzzy verbs:

  • Writing in science has to be clear and verbs that show action make writing clear. Verbs that mask the action are weak and can be confusing.

  • Fuzzy verbs say that something happened but not what; action verbs show you what.

    • Action verbs are powerful, concrete storytelling tools.

      • Fuzzy (weak) verbs: occur, affect, facilitate, perform, conduct, implement, ...

      • Action (strong) verbs: modify, accomplish, create, increase, decrease, invade, react, inhibit, disrupt, accelerate, migrate, ...

    • The worst place for a fuzzy verb is in a hypothesis. You need to use concrete verbs that make a testable statement.

• Nominalizations:

  • The process of turning a verb into a noun is known as creating a nominalization. Examples:

    • Influence: A had an influence on B (nominalization). Correct: A influenced B.

    • Approach: Tom took an approach to the problem... (nominalization). Correct: Tom approached the problem...

    • Yield: The yield of the reaction was... (nominalization). Correct: The reaction yielded...

  • Another problem with nominalizations is that they are necessarily connected to fuzzy verbs (because the actual verb is nominalized and the sentence still needs a verb!).

  • It is also common to nominalize adjectives. Always work on making strong verbs and short and vigorous sentences.

• Find the action in your sentences, put it in your verbs, and put them early in their sentences. If you do, your writing will be clear and lively.

  • Sometimes a passive voice or a nominalization will strenghten your writing, and sometimes they are essential. HOWEVER, everytime you use them unnecessarily, you make your writing heavier and more opaque.