Much of a career in science revolves around writing challenges. A scientist has to communicate with their colleagues through journals. They have to communicate with funding agencies through requests for proposals. Not to be forgotten, they have to communicate with the wider public. Thus, scientific writing becomes a key element of the game. Likewise, understanding the forms and conventions of scientific writing can give one a professional leg up towards enhanced status in the scientific community. This book takes aim at that sweet spot in trying to introduce students to the practices of technical communication.

This book seeks, first, to bring the field to life. It emphasizes that scientific writing is a fundamentally social venture meant to collaborate with colleagues. A writer has to persuade an audience and learn from others’ writings. To complete the introduction, the authors explore technological and ethical dimensions of writing.

Then the authors explore various conventions of writing, including reports, reviews, conference presentations, proposals, and public communication. These modes facilitate disseminating scientific findings for posterity. It’s hard to imagine a career in science without mastering these writing forms.

Finally, to transform principles into action, the authors offer historical surveys of five recent series of writings about how science has evolved in an area. These case studies offer stories, told through a collection of published writings, of how discourse has transformed over years and even decades. These stories combine different forms of writing to construct a complex tapestry, often from proposal to scholarly solution to public dissemination. Not only do they introduce this book’s readers to interesting subjects, but they also show how writing forms from different authors complement each other to shed light on a concern.

This book’s intended audience clearly consists of late undergraduates and graduate students who are developing a career as a scientist. It offers little guidance to those more inclined towards business and financial impacts, but rather focuses on those for whom writing will provide the main productive medium. Although the “publish or perish” mantra can be misleading, a scientist who does not know how to communicate is a fighter with no weapons. Writing is the only way to survive and thrive as a scientific leader, and to educate trainees, Penrose and Katz offer a thoroughly researched and carefully thought-through investigation into technical writing. ( )

1. The scientific method (such as it is - it has changed over time and the current philosophy dates only to Karl Popper in the early c20 and his rejection of classical empiricism) is fundamentally conservative so that scientists often make errors of judgement and are markedly reluctant to accept new evidence

2. Scientists are people and subject to all the same prejudices and psychological biases -try reading up on pathological science to see how wrong it can go - people published refractive indexes of different materials to N rays in peer reviewed journals, even though they did not exist.



One of the real problems is that a lay person doesn't quite appreciate what scientific discourse is. Scientists agree on facts, but can disagree on interpretation of data. We often need additional experiments to be certain of a conclusion, and sometimes it can be years before that critical piece of evidence is there for us to be sure. Sometimes you do need to test a contrary hypothesis, even if to show it is wrong. Sometimes, it is the sheer weight of evidence and logic rather than a specific piece of evidence that supports a conclusion and even so, we still welcome experiments that can prove theories wrong.

This is in direct opposition to a very black and white version of events that people hear from media and politicians.

The recent referendum is a point in case. One was supposed to be either wholeheartedly for or 100% against. The poor bugger who truthfully said he was 70% for it, was crucified. Another example is "Smoking Kills" message which although effective is less favoured than the scientifically correct "if you smoke, you are much more likely to get lung cancer which is almost incurable". The latter is more complicated but does get around the smart Alec that uses the anecdote of their grandpa smoking all his life and only dying at the age of 134.

So, part of the education has to be that sometimes scientists need time (and money) to give a concrete answer. But the public shouldn't think that is a weakness of science, because once an consensus answer is given it is based on incontrovertible evidence and logic. People who then question it, are charlatans and snake oil merchants. ( )