Conversations in Science: My Writing as a Biology Major
As a biology major, I have had extensive practice in scientific writing. Primarily, in lab reports and scientific journals, evidence is needed in order to support scientific claims. Types of evidence include mathematical calculations, observational data, physical data, and statistical analysis. Evidence is needed in order to support or disclaim any hypothesis that is made at the beginning of an experiment. The scientific method is the most common process that biologists go about conducting research. This includes making observations, asking questions, formulating a hypothesis, conducting an experiment, observing and recording data, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions. This is a very systematic methodology that biologists use in order conduct research in an organized manner. The way scientists communicate is exactly through documenting each step of the experiment using the scientific method and compiling it all together in a scientific journal or lab report. When such documents are published, scientists are able to look at other people’s work that may be similar to their own or a question they are interested in and see what results were previously accomplished. |
One of the unspoken rules of scientific writing is to be precise and specific, but not too detailed. That is, lab reports are supposed to contain only the most vital information that the researcher wants to get across to the audience. Someone should be able to replicate the experiment just by reading the paper, but nevertheless it should not contain any “fluff” writing that is not absolutely vital to the conduction of the experiment or the subsequent analysis.
Another rule of scientific writing is to stay organized. Usually, scientific papers have several headings, subheadings, graphs, and charts. It should be very easy for someone to navigate through a scientific paper. One thing that is very unique to science is that although we may come to conclusions, there is always more research that can be conducted and questions that could be answered. The conclusions that we come to from research change over time as we gain new technology and research methods. Conducting research is a very timely process. It is important for scientists to gain a myriad of data over an extensive period of time in order to effectively draw conclusions that are accurate. |
the scientific method: |