After reading the chapters in Writing in Biological Sciences by Angelika Hofmann as well as The One Right Way to Talk Science by Jay Lemke, I learned and was surprised by a few things. I found it interesting in the reading by Lemke that he seemed to oppose the use of formality in scientific writing, or rather, encouraged the fact that science is a very “human” activity. Lemke lists even the ways that scientific writing can be too correct and too serious, which ultimately drives the attention of the reader away. He says that “these rules are a recipe for dull, alienating language. They mainly serve to create a strong contrast between the language of human experience and the language of science” (Lemke 134). I found this quote to be particular interesting because from I have always been taught in school about scientific writing, it should be as formal and serious and complexly worded as possible. However even I feel at times, even reading the scientific review article (from this week’s readings), Describing and quantifying interspecific interactions: a commentary on recent approaches by Peter A Abrams, that it fit this serious and “alienated” language description exactly as Lemke describes in his chapter. I felt that the constant use of complex wording actually made it harder to follow (without having to re-read a few times) in certain paragraphs because it was so serious. Another point I learned came from Hofmann, where she provides the difference between a scientific research paper and a lab report. Previously I had considered them to be found within the same category because they both include introduction, methods, results, and conclusion sections, however there is a difference. Both are based upon original sources of data, however lab reports focus on one particular study while research papers investigate a whole “family” of related experiments performed perhaps over a period of time. As she continues her description of lab report tips, I liked how Hofmann gives samples of good and bad types of titles (even a title page), tables, abstracts, and provides structure formats for introductions and the big picture.
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