Scientific writing

This week we again talked about bias and cultural fingerprints in scientific research and analysis. One complaint i heard when it came to looking at Banu Subramaniam’s writing in “Ghost stories for Darwin” was that it should have been written more “scientifically” while simultaneously the objective, passive, nature of scientific writing has been critiqued throughout the semester for failing to recognize the biases and agency of researchers in the process. While i dont think writing “scientifically” is the only or necessarily best way to disseminate knowledge I thought this Ted talk by Judy Swan raised a lot of good points about why the process is written this way, the benefits of passive writing, and how to write more engaging “science”.

A few general points from her talk:

Scientific writing is telling the story of the objects being studied. To tell this story of materials without agency requires passive writing. Passive writing also removes the researcher from the process while allowing the researcher to show the reader how to see what they saw. This, the irrelevance of the particular researcher, is key to scientific writing and research and to telling the story of the “objects”.

This talk doesn't raise any crazy or reformative ideas we haven't mentioned in class (removing agency and researcher, not taking into account larger context, etc.) nor does it resolve the issues surrounding those characteristics of science. I just felt like it was a good and interesting summary and defense of “scientific writing” from a scientist and writers perspective.