Reprinted from Omni, 1982, pg 130
Everyone knows that scientists write badly – everybody, that is, except scientists. They think they’re merely being precise and orderly, and everyone else on the planet is either (a) illiterate, (b) sloppy, (c) a humanist, or (d) all of the above. In some cases, of course, the individual scientist is not well acquainted with the English language. In the opinion of English scientists, this explains the frequently unintelligible papers of Americans.
The scientist is, by his reliance on the passive voice, hobbled, leading to sentences like this one, in which the subject is acted upon with lumpy nouns, without ever saying exactly whom the action is done by, so that the sentences get longer and longer as you read and never seem to end, even when there is clearly nothing more to say in the sentence, at which point the reader sometimes gets a meager little semicolon; this gives him a rest, so that he can go on and read another long phrase without really learning anything more, because the writer’s hand has kept on moving even though his brain has long since been disengaged.
What to do? Trying to straighten a scientist’s syntax is like trying to unsnarl week-old spaghetti, with some exceptions. It is far better to change the packaging of the sentences. Scientific papers are written like elaborate lab reports – first A, then B, on to C, plodding on to the conclusion. Such papers assume the reader is fascinated by the pearls of wisdom that ooze through the barnacle-laden sentences. The sad truth is that hardly anyone ever reads a paper all the way through.
A study by a British physics journal shows that the average number who finish the whole paper is 0.5 – and that includes the author. Apparently, most scientists can’t bear to reread their own work, much less read anyone else’s.
In this paper a new scheme for paper organising is proposed. It does not rely on weaning scientists away from the passive-voice construction, like that last one. Instead it relies on the way scientists actually read and on their motivation for reading papers.
While reading a scientific paper, scientists are led by two needs: (a) ego and (b) desire for information. Our research shows that Need always dominates. Therefore, papers should be organised to satisfy this. The preferred approach, one that makes the most of these insights, is as follows:
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TITLE
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AUTHOR’S NAME
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REFERENCES.
These must contain a broad spectrum of sources, mostly to ensure the greatest probability of naming the reader. Use as many multi-author papers as possible to maximise the number of people who can be mentioned. A scientist will always pay greater attention to colleagues who cite him, if only to find in the text where he gets mentioned. Thus, the best strategy is to cite everybody you can, but then place the citations in the most unlikely places in the paper. Then the scientists have to read all or most of the paper carefully to find mention of them. They might even discover what the paper is about. A really high-risk alternative is to cite someone in the list of references but not in the text. Then he will read the whole paper, twice. The disadvantage, of course, is that he will be livid with rage and frustration by the time he finishes.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.
An important ego feeding ground. Thank the big names in your field, even if your sole contact with them was over coffee at some conference three years ago. The list should be lavish, implying close connections with the movers and shakers, but avoid mentioning dead people. They can do you no more good, and their rivals are still around. Finally, if space permits, include those who actually helped you. This part of the acknowledgements is purely optional.
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GRANT REFERENCE.
Your grant-monitoring officer will always look for this. So stick it in early. Also, others will want to know what agency got suckered into paying for this stuff, so they can hit it up for grant money themselves.
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INTRODUCTION.
Here you can explain what you want to do. Promise a lot. Few will actually read the MAIN TEXT to find out whether you actually do it. Fewer still will care.
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CONCLUSIONS.
Always overstate your results. Claim certainty when you have only the vaguest of suspicions
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MAIN TEXT.
With any luck, there won’t be any need to write this section. Everyone will have turned to the next page to resume the search for his or her own name.