Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021
The introduction is a personal active story
Introduction: the hands of your paper
Paper structure and purpose
Personal
Your contribution is woven into the work of other scientists (the referenced related work). Clearly identify what is yours and what belongs to others by using the personal pronouns ’we’ or ’our’.
Naturally, using personal pronouns changes the writing style. Thankfully, there is not one scientific writing style, as many believe. There are two: the personal and the impersonal style. The introduction reinforces the motivation of the reader to read the rest of the paper, by being low on difficult content, and high in active voice and personal pronouns.
The Story of Vladimir Toldoff
“Vladimir!”
The finger of Popov, his supervisor, is pointing at a word in the third paragraph of Vladimir’s revised introduction.
“You cannot use ’we’ in a scientific paper. You are a scientist, Vlad, not Tolstoy. A scientist’s work speaks for itself. A scientist disappears behind his work. You don’t matter Vlad. ’The data suggest’… you cannot write “our data”. It’s THE data, Vlad. Data do not belong to you. They belong to Science! They speak for themselves, objectively. You, on the other hand, will only mess things up, introduce bias and subjectivity. No Vlad, I’m telling you: stick to the scientific traditions of your forefathers. Turn the sentences around so that you, the scientist, become invisible. Write everything in the passive voice. Am I clear?”
“Crystal,” Vladimir responds, “But I was only taking the reviewer’s comments into account.”
And with that, he hands out a printed copy of the comments he had received from the reviewer.
Popov grabs the paper.
“What kind of nonsense is this?”, he says.
(reading the letter aloud)
…Your related work section is not clear. You write, “The data suggest”. Which data? Is it the data of [3], or is it your data? If you want me to assess your contribution fairly, you should make clear what YOUR work is and what the work of others is. Therefore, if it is your data, then write, “our data suggest”. Also, if I may make a suggestion, I feel that your introduction is somewhat impersonal and hard to read. You could improve it by using more active verbs. That would make reading easier….
“Ah, Vladimir! No doubt, this comes from a junior reviewer. What is happening to Science!”
Even if you are the first author of the paper, research is, for the most part, a collaborative effort. It is therefore appropriate to use personal pronouns such as we or our, leaving the personal pronoun I for later in your professorial career when you write papers alone. Some of the old guard object to the use of personal pronouns, and advocate the passive voice to give the paper a more authoritative disembodied voice, but I will argue that it is difficult to welcome a reader into the body of your research this way.
The Story of the Passive Lover
Imagine yourself at the doorstep of your loved one. You are clutching, somewhat nervously, a beautiful bouquet of fragrant roses behind your back. You ring the doorbell. As your loved one opens the door and gives you a beaming smile, you hand out the bouquet of flowers and utter these immortal words:
“You are loved by me.”
What do you think happens next?
1. You eat the flowers; or
2. You ring the doorbell again and say the same thing, this time, using the active voice.
Active story
The introduction of your paper helps guide the reader into the story of your research. But to be engaging, stories have to have certain qualities! As readers, we are interested in knowing WHO is doing WHAT. The active voice forces this sentence structure to always be present, as in we considered all available options. The passive voice allows for the subject to be hidden, as in all available options were considered. They were considered, yes, but by who? Stories without actors are boring, and you can’t afford to start boring your reader in the introduction.
“We were curious to see whether we could resolve the discrepancy between these gene profiling studies by using our current understanding of the gene differences between GCB and ABC DLBCL.”6
See how abstract and introduction differ in writing style.
Abstract
“The GCB and ABC DLBCL subgroups identified in this data set had significantly different 5-yr survival rates after the multiagent chemotherapy (62% vs. 26%; P = 0.0051), in accord with analyses of other DLBCL cohorts. These results demonstrate the ability of this gene expression-based predictor to classify DLBCLs into biologically and clinically distinct subgroups irrespective of the method used to measure gene expression.”7
Introduction
“We demonstrate that this method is capable of classifying a tumour irrespective of which experimental platform is used to measure gene expression. The GCB and ABC DLBCL subgroups defined by using this predictor have significantly different survival rates after chemotherapy.”8
The abstract is more precise than the introduction when it comes to the key numerical results. But, the factual abstract does not tell a personal story: ’these results demonstrate’ is impersonal whereas ’We demonstrate’ is active and personal. The passive voice is quite acceptable in the rest of your paper where knowing who does what matters less. But in the introduction, the active voice rules!
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Did you use the pronoun ’we’? Did you answer all the whys? Identify where each why is answered. Do you bridge the knowledge gap with some definitions? Did you build interest in the story? If not, why not? Did you cut and paste text between your abstract and your introduction? If you did, rewrite. To identify whether you adequately scoped your problem and solution, simply underline the sentences that deal with scope, assumptions and limitations. Are there enough of them? Are they at their proper place? Finally, did you mix introduction with technical background? If you did, place your technical background after the introduction under a separate heading. The introduction captures the mind; the technical background fills it. These two functions are best kept separate. |
1 George Wright, Bruce Tan, Andreas Rosenwald, Elain Hurt, Adrian Wiestner, and Louis M. Staudt, a gene expression-based method to diagnose clinically distinct Subgroups of diffuse large B Cell Lymphoma, Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences, August 19, 2003 Vol. 100 No.17, www.pnas.org, copyright 2003 National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
4 ibid.
5 Shuiming Ye, Zhicheng Zhou, Qibin Sun, Ee-chien Chang and Qi Tian, a quantizationbased image authentication system. ICICS-PCM, Vol. 2: 955—959. © I.E.E.E 2003
6 George Wright, Bruce Tan, Andreas Rosenwald, Elain Hurt, Adrian Wiestner, and Louis M. Staudt, a gene expression-based method to diagnose clinically distinct subgroups of diffuse large B Cell Lymphoma, Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences, August 19, 2003 Vol. 100 No.17, www.pnas.org, copyright 2003 National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.
7 ibid.
8 ibid.