I've been focusing on scientific writing for more than 20 years in part based on
my experience in graduate school that I had fantastic mentors I had really
excellent advisers and worked with trimmed terrific people so I learned a
lot about how to do an experiment
what's a control what's a good research system how do you know when you're done
but when it came time to write nobody actually have very much to say to me
except you know how to do this don't you
and what do you say at that point you're 50 or 60 or graduate student actually
have no way you sure yeah alright yeah ok
and and so go and do it and so I didn't do it and what I discovered then and
repeatedly since then that although in the process of writing my papers and
writing my dissertation
although my data remained the same
my results did not anybody ever have that experience
not yet you will you will you will
ok that the debt that I didn't do any new experiments but the process of
writing changed
what i thought i had and in fact what I had and what I published and what I'm
known for and that struck me as really interesting and surprising because it's
suggested that in the process of writing up it's such an odd metaphor you
we just got the results i'm just going to write him up like the laundry list
and the process of writing up my data and my results that i was actually
discovering new things and therefore this was part of science and here i was
at this mecca of science and nobody had anything to say about it now
I also thought that sounded like an opportunity and it turned out to be and
i was fortunate that I ended up shortly after that at Duke where I met to the
dress then director writing George copán and i ended up being able to make
a career scientific writing so that I want to talk to you about strategies for
thinking about writing that I learned back home 20 years ago and have been
propagating ever since
because this is a group that's particularly concerned about
communicating not only with it was communicating especially outside of your
specific discipline
what I want to focus on in
two hours that we have together are things that will help you in both arenas
so we're going to try to introduce you two ways of thinking about language that
when I hope will open the door to thinking more broadly and two going out
off in search of other resources and other materials and I've got some you
know some some some there's a second page the handout that has resources that
will come around a little later
and in addition will give you give you some materials that you can work with in
pcr and going forward
okay let me ask a couple questions for us know how many of you write about your
science
once a week and like a show of hands please and don't worry this is not a
prerequisite for being here
ok no not there ok how many you're right about your science once a month
well that's a little bit that's pretty good about once a quarter at least once
a quarter
alright so we have anybody who's up at six months or a year once a year we
didn't get their hands up there everybody writes at least once a year
ok please think about your pee I think about the person who runs your research
group
how many of them right about science once a week
please raise your hands yeah okay
guess what guys you just signed up for the job of writer you did
I mean you know you are going to live and die not only by the quality of the
research you produce but more by the ability to get it out fast enough and to
get it into the right place into the hands of the right readers scientists
are writers
sorry I didn't like that either
yeah yeah I remember I had a high school teacher who was so disappointed I was
going into science is she right so well and I thought heck with that
so I find it very amusing that this is what I do now so scientists are writers
let me give you one more twist here
it's not just that's an easy sell mean that you know
look let's be let's be clear you're going to be writing and that's it
doesn't you can say oh I'm not going to run a research lab in an institution
I can tell the pharmaceutical industry I've worked for government agencies
that's what scientists do that's what experts do they produce text
your job will be as a writer except if your scientific writer
your job is a bigger job than most of the writers out there because what
distinguishes scientific writing from other writing and other disciplines is
not that we write about numbers so to economist or not that we write about
images so to art historians but the thing about economist and art historians
is they write single author documents and we don't do we we write multi-author
documents
so not only will you be spending your career writing a good percentage of the
time but you'll be writing with other people
so guess what not only are all scientists writers they are all de facto
teachers of writing because you're going to spend your careers working with
people who have different degrees of experience in writing on communal
documents and I just came back from a week at the EPA it is my eighth trip
there they write documents of 2228 pages with 65 authors and as they put it if
somebody isn't trying to sue them
they're not doing their job ok so these are really complex documents and if you
want to use when you so very quickly you're going to find yourself in a
situation where you are not responsible
oh you're responsible not only for what you write but for giving feedback to all
the other people who are writing with you and unless your co-authors give you
what you want and what you need
without any feedback from you you are in exactly the same situation that new
instructors in our writing program are in when they face their first stack of
papers because I mean know if somebody teaching writing seminar can't go in and
rewrite all 12 drafts that the students have failed on and tell them what to do
they've gotta give they've got to provide feedback that enables the writer
to get better
alright so that's the framework for what i want to do tonight is actually want to
give i want to sort of move you to thinking about writing and language and
and two from enough to a different perspective to one that I think you'll
find more systematic and more logical so I'm gonna get a couple metaphors for
thinking about it and then we're actually going to do some hands-on stuff
all right and we're going to do and i'm going to set you up to think about how
to analyze things and then I'm going to let you do a bunch of revisions that
come from a workshop that I gave at the National Institutes of Health several
times it's actually an exercise that was developed at NIH using materials from
NIH and that's what we're going to do that sounds worthwhile to the next
couple hours okay
alright so what I do is I teach writing from the perspective of readers and
that's interesting because most of what we hear about writing is from the
perspective of writers and it asks us to figure out what number and by that I
mean you're you're sitting there you got writers have problems right it's hard
you got a blank piece of paper or a blank screen in front of you and the
question is what do I say next and what do I say next and I got five pages to
fill before tuesday if I'm in a writing class
what am I going to say i only have half a page to say now okay and and how am i
how am I gonna do this or you got the situation of
I've only got a hundred and fifty words for this abstract but I've got 400 words
and I still haven't said what's important to me and it's due tomorrow
because it's always do tomorrow right
and because because you're spending so much time in the laboratory getting the
data and because so writing you should know how to do this you can just do it
in your sleep
so we're constantly in this situation where we are in a panic typically or at
least concerned about what am I going to say next and then we get all this
negative feedback because things whatever you say next is the wrong thing
ok yeah so let's go let's go there
we have we and so I work I work mostly with students Michael so what actually i
have our courses for graduate students at Princeton and so I work with
registers but I also meet with their faculty so let me tell you a secret that
I tell all my students or faculty or expert writers they're not expert
teachers of writing and they often don't even have a language for capturing their
expertise they learned at the hard-earned way they've been copy-edited
to death which is the only way we know how to teach writing until about 30
years ago going and change it for somebody you see the changes I made hey
I see those changes
now you know what to do great yeah if I ever think that thought exactly this way
I'll know what to do how am I know how do i think a different thought I do we
need a more systematic approach to your advisor is your perfect professor's here
are they couldn't be here if they were not expert writers but they they don't
have a language and that's what I've been trying to develop for talking about
their expertise and so they don't have a way of passing that on to their junior
colleagues
imagine trying to do your research without a specialized vocabulary imagine
we didn't have a word called control and you're trying to explain this to people
everybody would be pretty frustrated ok how did this get there
so thinking about reading from the readers perspective
ask you to forget about never mind what I want to say there's a place for that
you've got to get to a draft but then you start thinking about who's reading
this document and what do they need from it and how are they going to behave now
the bad news for you for graduate school is it
you don't know this at the beginning of graduate school how many of you have
submitted a paper for review to a journal and had difficulty with the
review
ok you're starting to learn what kind of readers are out there
the standards of those readers what they need to know what that I call that this
is my target metaphor writing a scientific research article is like
shooting for a small target at the far end of a football field
it is it these are the most compact concise heavy-duty documents I've
encountered and I worked with a lot of different people
the rock the research article is the product of a ratio or it's what's left
over when everything has been stripped off it except exactly what needs to be
there and it's it's basically almost impossible to see that that's what
you're doing early in your career you've got to spend three years in the
laboratory convincing yourself that your data are real
before you have even an inkling of what it might take to convince somebody else
so we have to
I want you to worry about writing from the readers perspective and i actually
would define graduate school
the what you're really learning in graduate school or one of the one of the
ways of art make framing the whole arc you're learning to become a professional
reader of science
that's why by the end of your graduate years you'll probably be asked to review
papers and to ask act as a peer reviewer because you'll be able to represent the
scientific community but it's really hard to do that at the beginning
ok so i want to put that out there that one of that that in addition to learning
all the hot stuff in your field and all the new techniques and working on your
project you have a bigger research project you need to understand who are
the people that scientists right - okay so I want you to think about rewriting
from the readers perspective and just give you a couple metaphors and then
will plunge into actually doing some real work here reading takes energy is
that fair reading scientific articles especially takes energy
ok and what readers do with that energy as they try to figure out what does this
text me and i would like to say that they they're worried about two different
things right my chalk up there
new I put some chocolate side but then the board disappeared
ok what readers are trying to do is a writer's produce to text and the reader
is trying to figure out what does that text me and i want to say that what
readers are doing is they're interpreting attacks and you might not
like that you might think another time
we like to think of Texas if they're if they're the magic code like yo here's
the text and and here's the decoder ring and you will unpack what I packed into
this text sorry
right reading is not stuffit expander ok
it's it you got it readers interpret they look at the words on the page and
they look at what they understand about you know the writer purpose setting
language feel okay and then they figure out what does that text likely to mean
in that context the readers are interpreting and what this means is that
there's no way to control what anything means such that everybody interprets at
the same way i like to call this the thermodynamics moment
it's going to take you back to that moment in freshman chemistry where you
contemplated the heat death of the universe
normal gets recited as you can't win
you can only break even you can't break even accepted absolute zero and you
can't get to absolute zero right
ok this is the thermodynamics of language text don't have fixed meanings
words words are arbitrary the photo will ma is in almost every language on the
planet and it has a different meaning and every one of them
ok words don't have fixed meanings that have interpretations interpretations are
assigned by readers and readers and therefore interpretations possible
interpretations are infinite
so we're gonna start thinking about readers we have to think richly about
readers about the ways that they might interpret in the way we intend but they
might for reasons that are pretty obvious when we think hard about them
they don't know science they are afraid of science
the talk you're going to have next month that they've got they've got some biases
that make it hard for them to want to believe a piece of science
that's going to affect their interpretation so reading takes energy
and that energy goes into interpretation and interpretation has two parts first
readers read for structure and by that I mean what is this piece of language
what are these words in a sentence is a paragraph is it a document you know what
am I reading that structure
I've got the sentence where's the subject where's the burbank you that
structure and after they interpret structure they go for substance
now that I know how this is a sentence
what does it mean fair and in fact it goes in that order
first we figure out what's what are these words doing
and then what am I supposed to do with that information
ok so let me put these two claims these two postulates together
there's a certain amount of it takes it takes energy to read and read her energy
is finite at a given moment
you only have a certain amount of energy to do anything that energy gets just
gets dispersed as structure and then substance and this is a sum 0 game
energy that goes into figuring out the structure is not available to figure out
the substance if you're spending all of your energy trying to figure out how
these words or sentence
where's the verb where's the second Clause what's the subject and you have
very little energy to figure out what it might be telling you and that's a real
problem for us because our substance itself is sometimes really complicated
it needs a lot of thought ok
so we can actually and i'll give you my working definition of bad scientific
writing bad scientific writing is writing that requires a disproportionate
amount of the readers energy simply to figure out what it's all about
that's probably fifty percent of the literature right there yeah okay
all right so no more okay well i'm hoping to get a little less alright so
readers are worried about structure and substance now i'm going to jump ahead
and because I've got reference there we could talk more about that and I could
build up a holster but I'm gonna jump into it set of what i call reader
expectations so because readers are reading for structure before they read
for substance
if you know something about what readers expect in given locations you can make
some predictions about what readers will do with information in those locations
give you an example
um the readers we when you're reading the scientific research article you're
reading the most structured document academic document for sure that any
field has where do you expect to get the experimental details in the methods
section right
have you am sure you have read a paper where you did got those details in the
results section
how'd you feel sort of annoy like what are they doing
don't they know better I don't want to put this kind of detailed energy into
reading this stuff this belongs over there so we know this is the document
level and it turns out that structure is everywhere structures everywhere
and so if you can start paying attention to structure you start to see how
readers you get a clue and how readers are interpreting whether it's the level
of documents and all the way down to the level of sentences
ok so let me actually stopping theoretical and start to give you my
agenda here
I want to think about how do readers figure out what to emphasize
because if you could give you could have a reasonable
maybe if you could be reasonably confident that your readers were
emphasizing what you thought was important
rather than what they thought was important that might be fifty percent of
the job right there
if they agree with you and you said this is when you put something out because
you thought it was important you were confident that they said oh yeah I got
it
that's important i'm going to pay attention to it ok
one of the challenges of writing about sign of actually anything but especially
science is that sometimes we have competing messages to deliver there is
this result there is this uncertainty
there's good news and there's bad news
and one of the dangers and we see this happen all the time
is that what's up what I want you to emphasize is not what you decide to
emphasize and you run with the stuff that i would like to minimize and you
make it into a big deal right
so what I want to look at our how to readers make decisions about emphasizing
information and then we're going to work with his hand out and that and actually
then I'm gonna put your groups because i've i've done the figure out this big a
room full of groups that you get to do some hands-on to them
so what are the cues that readers use to figure out what's important
I'm going to be a structural q if I have two clauses in a sentence
although blah blah blah blah blah main clause which you can emphasize most main
Clause you can hear it in the name
readers tend to put grant emphasis to the information that arrives in the main
Clause main Clause is also known as an independent clause is the freestanding
cause
ok I can hear it in main Clause the board and claws be this shouldn't we
shouldn't have to make this explicit but we do main causes where we get the
emphasis
ok
a second queue for emphasis that we don't have time to develop and i'm just
going to tell you i'm going to tell you the proverb
save the best for last right so there's a tendency of readers to emphasize
information that arrives at the moment of closure at the end of something if
they get to the end
ok at the sentence level they get to the end
the chances of a reader leaving in the middle of one of your sentences unless
you bludgeon them to death are really slim a check out immediately after the
sentence but you can predict that a reader will stick around to the end of a
sentence
so there's a queue for emphasis what comes at the end
pens to get emphasis okay with me you give another queue for analysis from our
readers perspective something that takes longer to go into must be more important
right
if it demands more energy from you
you hope it deserves more energy from you and that it's more significant so
there's a queue for emphasis in terms of length and this explains propped up
experience i have a laboratory you probably have to do an experiment
the same same way 10 times and it runs properly nine times and then you have to
write it up those ten times and somehow the one time it didn't work
seems to take over the whole thing because you're spending so much time and
energy and so many sentences trying to explain away the anomalous result that
all the good results have disappeared right so length is the signal for
emphasis
here's a fourth one repetition and you might think oh we don't like repetition
of the scientific research are Bologna
what's the main result
where where is the main result of a scientific research article reported
somebody tell me and the abstract and in the results and in the discussion and
and the title and panted that we hope at the end of the discussion at the end of
the introduction
how do you know it's the main result because it's the result that gets
repeated so we use repetition as a source of emphasis we don't want
repetition that is unnecessary that becomes redundant but we certainly use
repetition with all we know that Q so part of what you see what I'm trying to
do i'm trying to surface and you what you know as a reader but you've never
been probably able to access and capture as a writer because you didn't have a
language to do that
ok one more source of emphasis and i'm going to put it down here and at the
category and i'll use the formal term is semantics
I'm words the words can tell you what's important
if a writer says the most important thing is then unless you're being you
know sort of annoying and uncooperative I think you believe them but the words
themselves sometimes signal important to it's right if you've got a hot word or a
buzz word or a word that is in and big it has had a lot of power in it the word
can carry things as well
now most writing most writing handbooks talk about emphasis and talk about
writing in general as if riding with eighty percent word choice find limo
juice
the right word and it's always the right word of its french fry limos used and
twenty percent structure and we're going to do an example that I hope will
convince you that it's the other way around that readers take eighty percent
of their instructions at leeds for emphasis from the structure words count
for much less than you think and I think this is great because i think i love
structure on the scientists structure structure is what we do really well so
you can start paying attention the structure you will see all sorts of
things
ok questions before we turn the hand up with megan says okay let's take a look
please at the handout
you've got and I should put well i'm going to pan without my glasses and I
wanted to take a look at these first four sentences and i'm just going to
read them to you everybody gotta hand out here this is the one that has the
pcr on the top up if somebody comes down towards the front and could bring some
extra from the back that would be great a couple people here who need them
ok maybe I will get my glasses what we're doing that
yeah okay do you have the handout
let me just introduce you to these four sentences
1a is although friends a nice guy he beats his dog be although Fred beats his
dog
he's a nice guy see friends a nice guy but he beats his dog
d Fred beats his dog but he's a nice guy
okay now first let me just tell you these are made up examples this did not
come from the NIH
ok so this is a pedagogical example i just wanna be clear because all the
other examples are from the NIH but this one is pedagogic all right
what we have here are four sentences about Fred
yes with two clauses and in each of these four sentences we know the same
two facts
fred is a nice guy and Fred beats his dog
ok so the data are identical in these four
so now we're going to do an experiment a little bit of crowdsourcing and I have
to set it up first
so number one those of you who are dog haters
you do not have to identify yourselves but i want you to understand that at
least for the purposes of our discussion over 20 minutes
dog beating is a bad thing
you with me good
ok now those of you who are dog lovers
I have to ask your forbearance as well I want you to consider the possibility
that somebody who beats his dog might actually be a nice guy
oh and i can already see a half of you just looked at me and said no no I won't
do that and if that's you
ok if that's you if you're about moral backbone is so Iraq that it will cannot
be contorted into this then i have to change your question because what I'm
going to do is I'm going to ask all of us to judge fred and since you have
already condemned Fred that's not useful
ok what your question is can be not to what do you think of Fred
but what do you think the author of this sentence wants you to think about Fred
ok so what's the message the sentence descending as opposed to your personal
judgment with me
ok so here's how it's going to go i'm going to read those four sentences and
I'm going to ask you to vote and you vote by putting your hand out thumbs up
yay Fred or thumbs down
nay Fred are you instructed
are we ready here we go ok a-although friends a nice guy he beats his jaw dog
please judge fred thumbs down on red thumbs-down anybody thumbs up here now
it would seem to be nine it was a big group will crap you're all down on Fred
in turn could be although Fred beats his dog
he's a nice guy please judge fred look at that
okay now this is looking more it is your thumbs up you're not a hundred percent
thumbs up and that you know some of you have held out okay
but you like ninety-eight percent thumbs up with Tracy Fred a nice guy but he
beats his dog
okay now this is interviews
did you notice how much longer it took to get to that position your position
that position seems to be more negative than positive but it's still pretty
split
d Fred beats his dog but he's a nice guy
okay now you're more positive than negative but you're still collectively
split and some of you are like you know just what I'm not doing this I'm getting
a lot of your individually split
ok huh so so but let me see if I can summarize this as a population you are
more positive than negative but it's more is like sixty or seventy percent
positive and thirty percent negative
it's taking longer to get there and and there's more of this
ok congratulations carnegie mellon you are a normal audience i have personally
done this experiment about a hundred times and all audiences all groups of
readers respond as you did
now before I say anything else if you were ever in the minority and any of
these positions do not worry you two are normal
ok you are part of the normal minority and it is normal because we're talking
about not the reader
there is no such thing as about reader its readers and this is this
I you know I love it when this many people can say they can actually do real
statistics by one around here and and so real readers base respond as you do now
how did you respond hey guys you changed your mind
yes and the data did not change data are the same but they did not
we did not reach the same conclusions on those data in these four sentences
that's interesting
and that's why I entitled this the facts do not speak for themselves and you can
just imagine that the guys who write wrote the pink sheets at NIH they were
really interested in this one because there's good news and there's bad news
and the question is what's the judgment of those too
okay what's going on here we've got two clauses and they are the same length so
we're not even dealing with this part of it we're just dealing with these two
expectations
we've got two clauses 1 is a main Clause the other is a qualifying Claus one
closet at the beginning when clauses at the end
so let's go through these four of them an analyst
system although friends a nice guy he beats his dog main Clause beats his dog
and placement beat his dog to structural instructions pointing in the same
direction to emphasize dog beating and you all got it
hundred percent thumbs down read the bad guy that's what I'm supposed to take
away be although Fred beats his dog he's a nice guy
main Clause nice guy and placement nice guy
your response go friend go Fred now you know the dog beating of presents some
people is that there's always a group that just can't go there right
so it's like ninety-eight percent from fridge for bu typically all right now
let's look at C and D friends and nice guy but he beat his dog main Clause nice
guy and placement be his dog you feel the ambivalence
can you feel that love being pulled in two different directions so it takes a
little longer for people to vote now
it isn't that when in placement and main cause conflict everybody slowly goes to
one side or the other
they split at least what it looks like that face with a conflict of which of
these do i pay more attention to some people go with main Clause main point
I'm running with it and the other and other people say in placement last word
I'm running with it and everybody's a little off base because they're getting
a conflicting message so that suggests that when now the fact that were more
negative than positive suggest that when n placement and main Clause are in
conflict
maybe we go a little more for the in placement
maybe or maybe when there's a conflict we pay more attention to the date of
themselves and try to decide what we think like maybe dog beating is a worse
bad then
nice guy is a good
so but fortunately we have indeed the control and we flip it
Saudi Fred beats his dog but he's a nice guy and put main cause beats his dog and
placement nice guy
and did you notice what happened you flipped again you're still very split is
about thirty forty percent go with the main Clause but the other sixty percent
go up here actually really what I forgot to say on the when I said if if you if
you're in the minority not only should you feel normal that's good but you
should be paying extra attention if you were ever in the minority here because
what you have just discovered that you may not have known is that most people
don't read like you
that's really important to know you might need to do this deliberately
consciously for the reader
even if it's me if it seems a little odd to you
ok so what we start what do we do with this and just was just recap what we've
got here and we're going to add length and other things to it and then i'm
going to set you free to go work on it yourselves for a bit
okay what are we getting you want to sweat you want to swing the judgment one
way or the other
you stack your instructions you have bad news and you want people to emphasize
the bad news
you put the bad news in a main cause you put the main Clause at the end and you
can predict that 99% of your readers will go with that they were at least
understand what you want them to do they might object but they will still
understand what you're saying you want to go Paul positive you put the put the
good news in the main Clause you put it at the end you want to be ambivalent
and some yeah some you want to be ambivalent sometimes you split the
instructions but now you have to figure out well what's the strategic split am I
ambivalent but I'd like a little more positive i'm ambivalent I'd like a
little more negative
you pick but everybody will get influenced all right let's complicate it
ready let's drop length into this equation here we go take a look at E and
F
fred is a good husband a caring father of fine call again and altogether nice
guy even though he beats his dog
I would submit that length makes a difference yeah it's a little hard to
see what that difference
let's go try out even though he beats his dog fred is a good husband a caring
father fine call again and altogether nice guy
now let like definitely makes a difference even an F and it'll clear to
see what it is
let's look at first ok even though he beats his dog
we know the structure what kind of clauses this the subordinate clause
where is it
early we know that structure or subordinate clause early all I should
minimize this because the main Clause late is going to take it over
now we get to the main Clause Fred yes is a good husband or caring father phone
call again it all together nice guy
this is length it might even be repetition thread for president
all right this is clearly an apology for Fred
by the time of sentences over the dog has slunk off and walked in the back
room we've forgotten about him
ok so you don't put length in here and it out and the changes things now go
back to act ii starts off
fred is a good husband oh we know this structure which causes early main clause
fred is a good husband a caring father of fine call again and all together nice
sky
so now we're we're already looking at the structure of structure we saw before
the C&D right where the main clauses early and subordinate clauses late now
the last time we looked at that structure when faced with the conflict
between and placement and main Clause readers went with the end placement
what have we done now we dropped a lot of length into the main Clause does the
main Clause outweigh the end placement here
let's wrap the sentence up even though he beats his dog
privacy call this is something wrong with Fred look at all this wonderful
stuff about Fred and he still end up beating his dog
let's get him a psychiatrist ok so what's going on here what's going on
here
length makes a difference so fair I think and I think the difference it
makes is that length is an intensifier it adds to the message
so you're sending an ambivalent message oh it gets really ambivalent when all
the length gets dropped in there
you're sending a really strong message one way or the other that that's really
clear what have to try this together with the next example the next ones are
actually your imaginary working how much you use this and then we'll put one more
thing
ok let's imagine that you are a congressperson from some districts and
you've just voted on the very controversial mrx plan and if you want
to say sequester go ahead but whatever how and you wrote it in favor of it
because you got your arm twisted by your party or where but your constituents are
ambivalent about it
what message do you want
we just pretend that whatever mr axis you decide where NSF funding
ok ok ok
and your constituents you're not but you're not you your congressperson ok
your constituents are ambivalent about it what message you want to send home
that you're ambivalent right because if you if you look like you're a big
booster of mr x all the people who don't like it are going to feel that they can
shut out
so you want to be ambivalence how do you do that you split your structures
particularly want to bring all the people who are against mr x
but you want them to still vote for you and what you said the best thing that I
know I didn't like it either it's not but I know mr x but I'm on your side
take a look at G it
yeah we should invest in the MRX plan even though the risks are high
I know it sucks this is why you send me to Congress to make these hard decisions
for us
you know it's it's probably ambivalent we're not a big fan of mr x
yeah ok let's try the next one and imagine your different congressperson
from a different court district and your district is in favor of them are
actually have no problem with your vote
what you're concerned about it its own
Marge of 2013 the election is 2014 and at the end of the year and those risks
could all blow up in your face between now and then
so you want to get them in the record so that you've got a way to get elected
my son's politics he said that's the first job of everybody in politics to
get reelected
ok that was news to me as a scientist I guess that makes sense
huh so what do you do you mention the risks but you don't want them to take
over so how do we do that we subordinate them put them in supporting Claus early
main Clause at the end
eh even though the risks are high
we should invest in the MRX plan i'm in favor of mr x
I'm your guy try third version
you're different congressperson a different district not only is your
district in favor of em are experts piece of pork they sent you to
Washington to get so you are planning to ride the coattails of mr x all the way
to re-election in November of 2014
how do you want to come across as the biggest booster of mr x you want to
emphasize support mrx as many ways as you can put it in a main Clause but the
main Clause at the end and make that Clause longer than the other one
I can already hear you know that this you don't have to be writing scientific
writing although it helps if we write any kind of writing and this is going to
matter look at I even though the risks are high
we should draw upon whatever funds are available and invest in the MRX plan
all right there we go
now that I make it a little more complicated
you see those extra words and I draw upon whatever funds are available
how many you got the advice to omit needless words
yeah I did too and if ever there were needless words
those are needless words right i mean what other funds would be drawn upon the
ones that aren't available
let's embezzle a little bit for mr x okay so i don't know what why are those
words there and this is one of the interesting moments
it's the difference between i forgot my other key term structure and substance
substantively those words are empty
they don't add anything but structurally can see what they do in terms of
structure
they're like ballast the weight that people would put in the base of a
sailing vessel to keep the keel down and the rest of it up right there
their ballots to make the main Clause the important claws to make clear
what's being communicated all right one more twist and then we get to go to the
breakout sessions I'm now i am not saying that structure is one hundred
percent and words are 0
ok if you have a strong enough word it can carry the day for instance try this
sentence although Fred's a nice guy he commits genocide
now i'm going to guess I'm gonna ask you to judge fred we're going to get a
hundred percent thumbs down on Fred
and it's not going to matter where we put them in prison sentence you will be
universal in your condemnation of Fred now but here's an interesting thing
we're going to unpack this what happens in those situations
is that the word carries the reader the readers judgment about the substance but
it reflects on your butt it changes the way the reader judges the right her
so let me just unpack what we just have to do it in slow motion and that you
know that this is a to just sort of here how that sentence unfold so bear with me
starts off although what does it although save you the beginning of a
sentence that that's something you're going to subordinate clause with the
main one that we expect every sentence to have a main Clause to tell the main
story but this sentence begins with good morning readers
I am the author waiting for the main clause i am the although Claus
i'm going to try to long for a while and tell you something after which you will
find what you were looking for the main clause which is going to undo everything
I just did right
that's what is that's what in all those says to a reader every time you see that
the beginning of a sentence and if that's what the sentence does your fine
alright so although this is the although Claus good morning Fred
well this is a sentence about friend it's Fred story those of you who were
there yesterday it's Fred story right
what is Fred story is over going to label Fred
what is Fred a nice guy stop there
right Fred a nice guy with a little bit of shadow behind him because fred has
shown up in an although clause and we know something's going to happen in the
next
but he can but he has bad breath
the dress is really really yeah something something is going to mess up
Fred
before the sentences out okay here we go
main clause he was still about Fred commits
what does he can be as adultery tax fraud
you know you know it's bad but how bad genocide boom and the whole thing blows
up
ok now let's change the structure
let's change the structure although this is the although closet will be
overturned by the main Clause friends Fred story tell me about Fred commits
what does red commit genocide and eat your all laughing because the mind says
I understand all of those words but i do not understand that thought what do you
mean
although Fred come its Genesis on the instructions are to overturn this
statement with something in the main clause and I don't get it
and if you stumble along to the end of the main cause he's a nice guy right
this is not that nice guy anymore is it some other
katja sarcastic sardonic so the longer story that we will have readers read
linearly through time and they make judgments as they go and they met and so
it
the order matters here ok let me give you your charge and it's actually good
time to start handing out the second page of yeah well I have a second hand
haha
thank you either okay i'm going to start putting you get what
so so this business of how do you signal not only to deliver not only information
but the judgment on that information
this is something we do all the time and it's not just as anybody who's in a
position of evaluating data people performance institutions and and then
being responsible for communicating that judgment is in this business it's called
being a professional professionals are paid to make judgments and to stand by
them
ok yes just one patient work okay whatever
it's this new page is coming but there's they're two different hand up don't
worry at NIH what they were faced with constantly was having to tell the guys
upstairs who made the funding decisions and the principal investigator who wrote
the grant what the judgment was on the grant and foremost grant while there
were some grants that were so beautiful and so wonderful and so clearly going to
work that there was nothing bad to say about them and there were also some
grants that were like so badly put together or so ridiculous or so you know
out there that they were never going to work and there's nothing good to say
about them
everybody else had good news and bad news
right and and is cut with with struggling with how do we spread that
out how do we not only say this is the good news
and this is the bad news but how we weighed those against one another and
because most of a structure is invisible rhetoric we don't notice it and so it
made of things to us and we are not conscious of it except now you're
starting to see structure and see what it does
they didn't know how to do this so let me give you a few examples of the what
they had and then I'm going to put you into groups to rewrite some of the
examples that you have to turn the page on the original hand up
so we're up to example number two okay here we go
and I want you to imagine that this is your proposal
you're the pea I and this is the judgment that's come back
this overall scope though it might prove to be overly ambitious is a great
conceptual strength of the proposal
how you feeling pretty good pretty good hey things are looking at why
so now let's analyze that judgment why are you feeling so positive
ok so whether P somebody give me one
what and placement ok the end of the Senate great conceptual strength of the
proposal whoo hoo that's really nice
what else is telling you to be happy main Clause the main Clause says this
overall scope is a great conceptual strength
now this is a little bit of an aside because we haven't mentioned yet but
where's the bad news
in the middle is between the subject and the verb in the main clause and i know i
know that the American find this article i wrote 20 years ago
makes the rounds at Carnegie Mellon but that's something we talked about a lot
of that article the position between the subject and the bird is a place that we
don't have a lot of attention available so they try to skip it and so this Reed
says this overall scope it might prove to be overly ambitious don't pay any
attention to that is a great conceptual strength of the proposal and you might
think oh I isn't this the words no look at be although this overall scope is a
great conceptual strength of the proposal it might prove to be overly
ambitious
how you doing you're gone right you are gone you are in this funding climate you
will not get anywhere
it's not the words it's the structure
take a look at another 13 this is an exciting but somewhat flawed application
from a creative investigator
how you doing so
so if now this is what this one I love because it's so it's such a puzzle until
you take until you take it apart
how many pieces of good news are there in that sentence
- you are a creative investigator and the proposal is exciting
how many pieces of bad news one it's flawed
now is it grossly flawed is it a rapidly flawed
no it's just somewhat flawed so this is a little weird right
we got two pieces of good news and we got one not so bad bad news but you can
feel it in your stomach
like this is not working something's wrong
so what's wrong what's doing that
what nope not the flaw the answer to all my quizzes should you ever need me again
is always structure structure
ok you just you can just know that all right what
in this what's at the end of the sentence creative investigator
that's good news but would you really like empathized the most in this
sentence exciting application because if after telling me that I'm creative in
the application is that the application is exciting and it's flawed and i want
to emphasize that you're really creative you can already feel and this
application is in big trouble
it's the wrong good new at the end of the sentence
so let's look at another version let me actually i'll ask you i'll ask you to
pretend you are NIH you are study section there are 30
you represent the 36 people around the table here is funding somewhere around
nine percent
here's fifty percent where would you put a six yeah
not you meet somewhere in the middle here my like and maybe there and i would
say with big error bars like the next sentence
this sounds a little confused and the next sentence might turn it around but
do it we're not doing very well
ok let's look at the next one be this creative investigator has produced an
exciting but somewhat flawed application
the message is a lot clearer right
what's the message the flaw is a problem so are we doing better or worse than a
worse but with very little error bars right so you know there's no we may be
somewhere in here but we're not you know I'm not sure we'd ever get up there here
but it's a little as a lot of variability
now let's try see this creative investigator has produced a somewhat
flawed but exciting application
how you doing
ok are we in the money
no no was flawed hey floor these days is flaw you're just not going to do it
ok that was before sequester ok but let's try d
what a white how do we get to see because the end the emphasis at the end
is on the exciting application and the flaw is buried in the middle
let's try d this is that this creative investigator has produced a somewhat
flawed but truly exciting application
how you doing a little better are you in the money
no but study section likes you and if there's any way to get you in the money
they want them to do that right
you know as a p.i you know that they're in favor of your work you just have to
clean up the flaw and they'll be happy to find you and upstairs maybe look put
you in
so he gets up not in the money but closer
why why truly ok what's truly doing
it's got its a semantic q
it says the truth is exciting and we were it's also balancing the you know
that that we were slightly and now we're really but what else is truly doing
length because in order to minimize the flaw
we had to add more words somewhat plot that's better than flawed but it's more
attention to flaw somewhat flawed but exciting somewhat flawed but M exciting
right and three syllables would be even better
somewhat flawed but M exciting
yeah ok we can we can hear this stuff you don't have to be a poet
in fact I think scientists have the kind of sensitivity to leverage the poets
have because our third so short
ok let's do it just a couple more and then i'm going to give you your charges
because you're going to do this because you can do it now
here we go see I said we're just get for let's get that one let's take a look at
number 5 is while the hypothesis from this highly qualified investigator is
novel stop there
how are we doing a little boy
this is sounding like good news except novel is one of those like innovation
lovely
they tend with innovative we'd be smiling but novel is the version of
innovation that says we don't like what you're doing even though it seems to be
new tactic and it's a subordinate clause so whatever is happening up here is
going to get overturned by the main cause
so this sounds like good news but it's good news that makes us go i'm not so
sure here comes the main Clause the rationale is poorly justified who the
studies lack the input of an expert in epidemiology who and a more similar
approach should be used first to assess the validity of the primary hypothesis
with preliminary data and reduction in cost and risk to the experimental
subjects
how are we doing we are dead
we r dennis is like do not we submit this
not in this form we got a main clause
we got what we got the main Clause at the end we've got all this length
we've got three main clauses and they keep repeating and what's the last word
risk to experimental subjects
this is a crash and burn
ok all right so here's your sign
watch and I'm gonna have to roll in a little bit and pieces i want you to find
no more than four people to work with to introduce yourselves to the people
around you and what I'm going to do is I'm going to give each group of maximum
five and really I don't make it more than five because it's too easy to coast
if you get the group's too large you will sit and listen and you have to
participate
what what came around in the state in the handout that the not to take away
one but the other one is a bunch of sentences mostly from NIH but not
entirely and i'm going to give each group two sentences to rewrite
so let me give you the charge and you can get into groups and i'll tell you
which sentences to work on and it doesn't matter we're big enough group
that they all get covered your instructions is as a group to revise
your sentences each one twice once to make the judgment on these facts more
favorable once to make the judgment on these same facts
the data are going to stay the same more negative so I want you to do that by
varying the structure which clauses at the end what information is in the main
Clause what information is in the end Claus how much length do you have you is
a are what are you repeating what get it if you repeat anything
I don't want you to invent new words to change that you will have to change the
words as you move things around so it is not you can change the words at all
what context controls meaning so you can always change how we interpret this by
telling us all these other things and I want you to do that
I want you to discover what structure does for you because one of the things
that will come out of this
this experience is that we tend to recognize structural problems in our gut
and then try to solve them by throwing word that them and words cannot undo a
problem of structure
yeah but that structure
oh no what
wait yep a lot and play right now okay we're going to be on d we're gonna be
really close
they were really close because flaw is one of these things it's hard to get
funded these days of your flawed
he is getting as close as we can get given that there is a flaw as always
says most favorable watch
I don't think it's the word so close watch what happens after and thank you
cuz i forgot to do this little twist you you feel like it's truly and the truly
is the thing that's pushing it up for the flaws doing it
let's drop truly into a ok
remember a on that one
this is a truly exciting but somewhat flawed application from a creative
investigator
it just sounds and coherent now right yeah like I don't know the the guide NIH
needs a vacation the sentence doesn't make any sense
how can the application be truly exciting and somewhat flawed and it
whereas with d we can see what they're pushing it up they can't make the flaw
go away
that's it so yeah no no you work with no it's not that you can you cannot do it's
not that you cannot do anything with structure we moved the judgment all over
the place
you can't get it funded with flaw thank you
ok so that's that's part of the charge if the sentence you're working with
once you make all the structural changes that you can still is just you can't get
it to be positive or you can't get it to be negative because the words are so
powerful if you have this scientific equivalent of genocide which floor these
days might be
ok No
then we just we just can't get through anymore then you can change that word
but I want you to not start by changing the words our instinct is to go and to
change the words and if you put you put different words in the same structure
you will deliver the same message except it will get less coherent
so that's the charge would you please hide yourselves and groups of no more
than 5 : my problem going meta to talk through what we did and why it works
because part of what we did is you're not imagining readers you have them all
around you get strangers telling you what they thought
and did you all agree immediately no no that's really really useful
okay i want to go through these and what I'm going to do is that it i'm going to
read the original sentence because every groups only looked at a couple of them
and and sometimes get a little commentary on and then i'm going to ask
for the revisions that I'm gonna ask for somebody who had six give me a positive
somebody give me a negative
what happens sometimes that will see this is why I want to leave 15 20
minutes to do it given the size of the room
is that something to say all we had more or less the same thing
yeah we don't want to hear more or less if it's if it's exactly the same words
then we'll skip you but if you had a slightly different version for your
positive and let's listen to that because we're going to evaluate is the
are the positives indeed more positive than the original and we have for
positives do we can we see any pattern there can we learn anything from the
variations in that as well
ok ready here we go first sentence 6 this current research effort by this
investigator has been in progress now for more than six years stop there with
that good news or bad news
it's hard to tell it's you know I've done and the engineers around us are
like six years I mean really
where is that one of the venture capital has gone elsewhere
it's interesting so if that feels mutual at-bats now i want to point this out
because one of the hardest things for readers to do is to undo a judgment that
they've made so we get that first clause and what kind of the main Clause right
with the main point and the main point we think is neutral at best and may be
negative
hmm onward but ok here comes to qualify unfortunate label
what did we just learn that that was the good news and this is haha so this isn't
a terrible sentence right
most readers are reading it and that looks neutral the best thing you can
you'll see the guys that worked on number six were like where's the good
news because it's there but but we what we have is reluctant to re-interpret and
this is a longer conversation about trying to get the default first
interpretation to be the one that you want to read it readers are interpreting
they're working hard
you don't want to be the second interpretation the second reading
they won't get there ok but unfortunately the productivity of the
many studies has been disappointing and I've everybody was working on this I
told had to think human genome project or mapping the mouse brain i think
that's actually what it was you know one of these ten or twelve year projects and
we're in year 6 and this is true
ok let me give me a more positive version of six thanks
yeah same facts much more positive
so now many studies is is something that we're emphasizing oh yeah they're really
busy aren't they
and six years yeah what's the structural changes that this group made the change
the order of the clauses yeah you took them in front the main clause was early
you put it at the end
by starting with a subordinate clause with despite somebody else who made it
more positive
ok
ok now is that more positive than the original
a little bit because the end placement is on been in progress for more than 60
yr we use you can with wire we ambivalent about that
nope nope you get into the words what's the structure and yes
you kept the bust you kept the ambivalence structure of main Clause
early and placement subordinate clause and because there's a flight emphasis
people are a little more inclined to emphasize what's at the end even if its
subordinate
this is more positive than the original but we want to go even more positive
although the do productivity of many studies has been disappointing
they've been added now for more than six years
ok and now we can create because we're about six years but they know that
somebody had to save the human genome project come on
all right somebody else happen what she had would you read it which is again
thank you
yeah
yeah so what you've done lovely you change the order of the information so
the the good news is at the end but you didn't change the order of the structure
of the two clauses and so that and you can hear how that makes a difference so
we've got great and this is why this is really found this useful because you can
start to spread people out
yeah
do you always have
are you always defending things
ok
right now I want to flag this though because i think that we're not again
we're not going to go too much into right a process versus readers but think
about how we write which claws are you likely to write first the main Clause
right and the positive or the clause that you want to empathize most
this is really good although there is this problem
this is really horrible although I guess we could consider it this way you hear
how where we're going to spontaneously probably produce the ambivalence
structure when we think we're communicating a strong message one way
or the other
so yeah and and you're young you will say that if you get that this is where
people get hung up
then you might find that you might need to change that you actually do mostly
want to say you know this is what I think that you've been using a structure
that's not letting you as much
ok how about making more negative wasn't that fun making all these little more
negative was shot in for here yeah okay
somebody another group that we haven't heard from displayed six years of
research efforts on TV station
yeah so we're not even get working we did despite despite is different from
although because the despite says hey we're pushing again it is subordinated
and pushing away
you got rid of the clause there's no verbiage that despite six years of
research effort support main Clause weighs more than the board and claws
claws mate weighs more than phrase that structure we know this in our bones but
now you've got it in you know the conscious part
somebody else with a negative
yep
ok so its structure makes a difference there
now all of these are playing one against the younger one more years it was the
closest to do this
this research ever buy this investigator has been in progress now for more than
six years and the bra
the productivity of the many studies has been disappointed
yeah yeah and it gets much more negative so we've lost the good news we've lost
the we've lost the truce clauses that are balancing each other and
contradicting each other
look at the sound board you control the levers you sure
unfortunately
this research has been a father is now for more than six years and if somebody
told me several years ago Fred still beats his dog
ok let's do number seven
overall however this proposal to scientifically sound but there is no
innovation I mean how many reversals can you do in a in a nine word sentence but
however is reversing the previous sentence by saying it scientifically
found and then it reverses itself and you really do want to send the sra on
vacation
so how did you have a group that made this more positive and try to have a
back here
ok
another group that's more positive yeah
Oh marvelous now let's compare those two they're both much more positive
is there a difference between them which one do you think which one is the most
positive
the second one why because not only is the no innovation subordinated but it's
shoved in that position between the subject and the verb that says don't pay
any attention to me
yeah yeah what the
so that's and that that's in the American scientists are going to stop
I'm actually not but I want to make it a rule so readers to expect the subject to
be followed immediately by the verb and they would like to put the two of them
together because that's structure anything between the subject and the
verb will be read with less attention and less and given less importance
it's not a good place to put a lot of complicated information but it's a
wonderful place to parenthetically say oh yeah and the way I think of this one
there were three people around the table
this was a great proposal everybody was really happy and then that guy said you
know I'm a little concerned about the productivity in the sra thought okay now
i have to write something about productivity and everybody else at the
table rolled their eyes and the sra got them ok
productivity has to get mentioned in a place where you won't pay much attention
to it because that which separates the subject and the verb is arriving when
leaders have no energy to process it so it if you put burbs at the end of your
sentences with long sentences before then we can make sense of them but
that's different from haven't had a chance to say this yet
I have one rule for talking about writing
ok we are doing a piston ology we're making truth claims we're trying to tell
the stories of things that cannot speak for themselves and we have to pay
attention and that will be and that I think is more important than making your
English teacher whoever it was happy with your sentence
so I don't want to turn I don't want to turn it into rules the rules will fail
they will fail if we had more time I could give you a set of expectations
that contradict one another and you take what do i do to get it right you get it
it's right it's delivering the message you want to send to the majority of your
readers
ok let's make up so anybody wanted that we had two positives anybody have about
different positive that push that a little further I think you guys did on
innovation
ok but we are what I've heard is no innovation yeah and did you
the guys at work with this did you feel like no innovation was a problem yeah
you got to get the head like not terribly innovative not as innovative as
it could be
or there's not much innovation no innovation is sort of what why are we
reading this
ok how about making more negative yeah down here
yeah we're done right
always finally found there's no innovation great honor to the next
proposal
we're finished it's really it's really clear that the innovation is the issue
main Clause at the end it all works ok let's take a look at the next one
because i don't want to do want to let you go is for pup number eight for
publications have been produced in the last funding . but they are not focused
on the three specific aims in the previous proposal
no I think this one's pretty ambivalent in its original and I think that was
true study section was struggling you know really productive but back with the
same grant
how did you make it more positive somebody who worked on this
we just stopped within the last funny but that's more positive even though not
focused for publication producing the last planning . somebody else
ok so this is taking the bad news and subordinating in the middle of sentence
also positive somebody else
ok so again you're getting it this this idea of taking much if you want to say
one way or the other subordinates the information that you want to
de-emphasize and open up space with the main Clause at the end for the
information you want to emphasize which words would you like to emphasize most
for publications
so let me give you another variation on this gets into other issues that we
didn't call it up
although they did not focus on the three specific aims of the previous proposal
in the last funding . the investigators produced for publications
it's the same words right it's the same words but we ended on the for
publications instead of in the last funding .
all right let's about making more negative more negative somebody who had
that some time somebody would set at eight for negative
come on ok
yeah
even though they're for publication will reduce they were not focus on the three
specific games
that's a problem I mean it's clear that study section thinks that's a problem
you might not agree with them particularly the p.i but yeah but you
know what they think somebody else with a negative
yeah thank you
okay so you got the in the last one in the last funding . out makes it and kept
the structure that's here because you've got a main Clause early and then the
sport and applause at the end so change but even getting the in the last funding
. out up front that helps to make it a little more negative
okay cool let's take a look at nine a series of and older rivers have been
reported to be melatonin antagonists
although information on the method used for such classification is not provided
sort of like well what are we going to do with this fact I don't know
and if you think I'd let my job i'm not supposed to make judgment here just this
is what I find that's not what you get paid for
okay about in the gum coming up how do you make a more positive somebody who
had this one
ok so we are starting to like this structure of I want to hide something
and put it between them and it might be too long you can hear how is it starting
to get longer you because I'm gonna private between the subject of our maybe
I want to chip down
it's definitely more store definitely stronger somebody else let me guess what
happens yeah okay okay good
somatic you played with length as well as structure so although information on
the method has not provided
whoo whoo
so note we've got to Clause we've got two verbs here one is reported in one is
classification and reporting sounds like you know they've reported something but
we don't believe them
although there's nothing about the method a series of Enda rivers have been
classified as this we are much less suspicious it's a different verb that's
lovely
how about making more negative someone that
thank you
yep yeah you might say well it's not that different but you can hear that
that that there's a problem that you didn't provide it
I'm labeling that negative by putting it in that position and if I'm if I'm study
section or something else
you can't talk to me unless you give me these features this is this is one of
the problems
let's look at ten this is a very short application with little experimental
detail by two new investigators who are very well trained in mouse genetics and
this strategy was a funny sentence
it is about making more positive
yeah
ok so we're subordinated that we just decided the problem is that short with
little details born a clause early main Clause they're very well trained in
mouse genetics
so anybody else have something diff remarkably different from that yeah okay
it can hear it right your I can throw your all nodding this has been a great
two hours you hear things you can see them you can control them
fabulous how about a negative well I've heard you that everything else with
negative yeah i know these are the organizers have known for too long
oh right that's a punch
that's a punch to show that you know although you're really smart and very
well trained your application is ridiculous
ok now context controls meaning
so we're gonna go back to the question for you and so we're looking at
sentences in isolation because I asked you to be too i want you to play with
the structure and within that we had enough context we think about NIH to
play with that structure
I can make number ten a terrible sentence without changing a single word
you ready i'm going to give you the context
what do you suppose was the subject of this grant application
mouse genetics right you can see that the emphasis on they are very well
trained in mouse genetics we say yeah Mouse genetics rule
guess what i will give you truth what was the application on human genetics
how are they doing and not so good they were in the 90 99 percentile
ok and that's how i found that but this is a brilliant so the last twist hoop
you saying you know what do people know that yes they know this does this
sentence sound like a 99th percentile sentence
there's no shame in that is very short little experimental get sort of flat
yeah it's only if you're the pea i and you know that you're very what that your
that you are that that the projects on human genetics and the cop emphasis on
Mouse genetics at that moment you know what happened and I think there's a
covert message in here that says hey guys guys
we know who you are you come from really good laps
we expect with things of you and we know you're smart but you have done the
classic newbies mistake you have written a proposal out of field without
sufficient experimental detail to justify it and rather than excoriating
them because they think you know you're really smart you're going to get it as
soon as you show this to anybody and clearly you didn't show it to anyone
until you send it to us
ok but rather than say all you idiots they say hey here's the thing here's the
score and now you know what the problem is what I was what's the implicit
instruction elaborate
you've got room resubmit and what will the and this is implicit not guaranteed
but it almost a promise here that says when you resubmit what will study
section right
this application is dramatically improved over the first submission and
these very talented investigators and if you've actually got the story you're
going to go for
I'm not now you might feel uncomfortable here that I'm asking you to make up
stories about your data you're tied to your data and I'm going to trust that
your faithful to your data
but your data don't speak that they cannot speak
you have to go figure out what do you believe you are allowed to claim on the
basis of these data that's number one
you must choose there is no neutral sentence every sentence ends
instructions and if the instructions are I have no instructions then the message
is and I'm incompetent don't listen to me okay
you want to be an expert you're getting a PhD or masters degree
ok that's you're being paid for expertise
you must make up your mind what you think
you must communicate that to yourself and others clearly and then what you all
did here so beautifully
you have to listen to what your leaders say there will be arguments
science is contentious it's difficult
we see the same thing and we interpret it differently
I want those arguments to be about the substance and we can argue about the
substance if the structure fails to transmit that substance clearly to us
that's your job you need you need to decide what your facts are and then
speak for them
that's whether you're talking to your other scientists but especially when you
are talking to everyone else
ok the more you listen to readers you'll see my takeaways one of my things is
listen to readers they are always right
the reasons they give you for what they think don't listen to those
ok because they don't have unless they have the language thing you always feel
sort of neutral means what you say why are they saying that being structured
they won't bring structure but things structure change the structure and then
ask the readers this better they'll say yeah I think his your friend of mine has
a history science professor writing this paper that there were three sentences
and she thought I was magic
because I there are three sentences where I could see ambivalence and
everything around it suggested that she was not ample she's writing at rosalind
Franklin treatment by Jim Watson I don't think she was ambivalent
but all those sentences were ambivalent I said do you mean this and we quickly
did friends job and she said no and I knew those sentences were bothering me
and no matter what words i put in them they stayed
they stayed troublesome said right because the words can't change the
structure
great you've done a nice piece of work thank you all very much
ok
amazing presentation and I'm happy to take questions i just it is 703 and some
of your have your rumbling stomachs anybody who needs to clear out of here
should do so i'm happy to talk to answer questions that there's anything left in
the back please
you feel it grab it on your way out there are also a bunch of handouts for
the GCC and from Moscow and Judy's hand out if you haven't done those and check
out our website as i mentioned earlier for more information about PPR thanks
for coming up so much for coming guys that with time
yeah i do this right it was the right one only thing i want to do
yeah it was fun it was fun
yeah