Style in Scientific Papers.
Our short considerations of the style found in scientific papers gets a little background in a new book reviewed recently in Nature. The reviewer is Steven Shapin from the History of Science section at Harvard, and his remarks add to our understanding of how scientific writing got to be the way it is. When science was emerging as an independent way of investigating the world, its practitioners wanted to be seen as accurate and objective reporters, rather than rhetoricians, who used all sorts of literary tricks to persuade. One consequence of this was the creation of a standard, formal method of presentation, and a consequent diminishment of personal elements in the report to concentrate the reader’s attention on the actions and results described. Some of the recent scandals about fakery in the presentation of research results suggest that there is a very, very large measure of imagination and creativity remaining in at least some scientific reports at least some of the time. Take a look:
The Scientific Literature: A Guided Tour edited by Joseph E. Harmon and Alan G. Gross, University of Chicago Press: 2007. 312 pp. $29.00 (pbk); $72.50 (hbk)
Review
