An Essay by George David Gopen
I will start by making the bold statement: 97% of all scientific writing is inadequate.
Let me say that more plainly: 97% of scientific writing is badly done.
I may perhaps have offended you. But let me help you to reach out to your own reading experiences to understand better what I mean by such an extreme statement. Let me ask you three questions.
First question: When you come to the end of reading a scientific document of any kind — a grant proposal, a published essay, an essay drafted for publication — I ask you, do you ever at that moment feel like slamming your fist on the table and crying out “Darn! It’s over! I was enjoying myself so much! I wish it had been two pages longer!”
Most of the time when we finish such a document, we tend to sense a feeling of relief that it indeed has ended.
For my second question, I ask you, the moment you finish reading an entire scientific document, do you ever indulge in a short, silent moment of pride — pride that you had summoned enough self-discipline and mental energy to make it all the way through that text? While we tend never to convey that to any of our colleagues, is it not a private, momentary pleasure all the same?
And thirdly, I ask you, the moment you finish reading an entire scientific document, how often do you feel a significant amount of fatigue? Again, we might not mention that to any of our colleagues, since we’re supposed to be mentally tough enough to do battle with these texts and not show any wear and tear; but is that not true for you at the end of reading many a scientific document? You feel a fatigue that has been engendered by the writing.
From where does this sense of your fatigue originate? I suggest it comes from the writer, sentence after sentence, not giving you a sufficient number of clues to understand how you are supposed to be putting these words together to form thought. Too often, at the end of reading one sentence, part of your brain is traveling back through it to clarify what it was supposed to mean, while most of your brain is hurtling forward in pursuit of the closure of the oncoming new sentence. When this happens — and I submit it happens for as many as 50% of the sentences you read in almost any scientific document — you have to add to your labor as reader the yet more burdensome labor of becoming its co-author. Your brain has to entertain this annoying question: “If I had written those words, what would I be trying to convey by them”? It is hard to be a co-author, especially when the other person is no longer around to clarify.
If you have to co-author half of all the sentences you read in a scientific document, it is no wonder that when you finish it, you feel a marked sense of fatigue. From my more than four decades of experience with counseling writers of scientific prose, I can assure you that my estimation of 97% of those documents being inadequate is in no way an exaggeration. It is a reality with which we live, by the force of circumstances.
The new news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Scientific writing can be made clear and readily available to the reader’s mind — which can happen once the writer becomes consciously aware of how readers actually go about the acts of reading and interpreting. That is the task my Reader Expectation Approach has pursued, refined, and proven over 45 years of practice. The full story can now be told, understood, and put to use, with astonishing results.
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