Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

Trap 1 — The trap of the story plot
Introduction Part II: Popular traps
Paper structure and purpose

The introduction helps the reader understand the context from which your research originated. Do you borrow or adapt the work of other scientists to reach your objective, or do you follow a completely different research path? The reader wants to know. Positioning your work on the research landscape is a perilous exercise because it is tempting to justify your choices by criticizing the work of others. It is also tempting not to compare your work with the work of others so as not to upset anyone. It is equally tempting to borrow other people’s ideas and conveniently forget to tell the reader where these ideas came from. Temptation is plaguing the scientist writing a paper simply because the stakes are high: publish or perish.

Five traps are laid in the path of writers: the trap of the story plot, the trap of plagiarism, the trap of references, the trap of imprecision, and the trap of judgmental words.

Trap 1 — The trap of the story plot

The introduction tells the personal story of your research. All good stories have a story plot to make them interesting and clear.

A story

I’m so excited to share this great story with you. My father [1] is on the front lawn cleaning the lawn mower. My sister [2] is in the kitchen making a cake. My mum [3] has gone shopping, and I am playing my electric guitar in my bedroom.

Do you like my story? No? It is a great story. What’s that you’re saying? My story has no plot? Of course there is a plot! See, it describes my family’s activities, starting with my father. We all have something in common: family ties, living under one roof…

If this story left you cold, the analogous story found in scientific papers will also leave the reader cold. In short, the story says: in this domain, this particular researcher did this; that research lab did that; in Finland, this other researcher is doing something else; and I’m doing this particular thing. The problem with this type of story is that the relationship between their work and your work is not stated. In symbolic graphical form, the story plot would look like 1a. The pieces are juxtaposed, not linked.

Figure 1a

All story elements are juxtaposed, disconnected: father, mother, sister, brother.

Contrast the first story with this one:

I’m so excited. I’m going to tell you a great story. My father [1] is on the front lawn cleaning the lawn mower. And do you know what that means? Trouble! He hates it. He wants everyone to help bring this or bring that to make himself feel less miserable. When that happens, we all run away, not because we refuse to help him, but because he wants us to stand there and watch idly while he works. So my sister [2] takes refuge in the kitchen and plunges her hands in flour to slowly make a cake. My mum [3] suddenly discovers that she is missing parsley and rushes to the supermarket for an hour or so. As for me, I escape to the upstairs bedroom and play my electric guitar with the volume cranked up to rock concert levels.

The difference is striking, isn’t it? In an interesting story plot, all parts are connected as in 1b.

Figure 1b

Three story elements (mother, sister, me) share a common bond. This bond isolates the square element (father).

Here is a second story based on a story plot often found in scientific papers.

A terrible story

I’m so excited. I’m going to tell you my second best story. A red Ferrari [1] would take me to the house of Vladimir Toldoff in 5 hours. It is fast. However, it is very expensive [2,3,4]. A red bicycle [5] is much less expensive and quite convenient for short trips. So, if Vladimir Toldoff comes to live near my house, it will be quite cost effective [6]. However, bicycles require accessories like mudguards or bicycle clips [7] to keep trousers clean. Red athletic shoes [8], however, require no accessories, and are as good a solution as a bicycle to travel over short distances [9]. However, their look is easily degraded [10] by adverse weather. On the other hand, brownish open plastic sandals [11] do not have any of the previous problems: they are cheap, weatherproof, convenient, and require no accessories. Furthermore, they are easily cleaned, and fast to put on. However, contrary to the Ferrari, they reflect poorly on the status [12] of their owner. Therefore, I am working on a framework to integrate self-awareness into means of transportation, and will validate it through the popular SIMs2 simulation package.

Yes, I have exaggerated (only a little), but you get the point. The however plot, after taking readers through a series of sharp however turns, completely loses and confuses them. The seemingly logical connection between the elements is tenuous, as in 2.

Figure 2

4 shapes: a sun, a star, a cross, and an ellipse. The first element is compared with the second, the second with the third, and so on. At the end, the final element is connected back to the original element, thus completing the loop. Yet, the sun is never compared with the cross and the star is never compared with the ellipse. For the chain of comparisons to be meaningful, the comparison criteria must be identical for all elements, and all elements must be compared.

On the way to the last proposal (the writer’s contribution), a long list of disconnected advantages and disadvantages is given; by the time readers get to the end of the list, they innocently (and wrongly) assume that the final solution will provide all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of the previous solutions. Unfortunately, the comparison criteria continuously vary, and therefore, nothing is really comparable.

Both plots, the juxtaposed story plot and the meandering story plot, are often found because they are convenient from a writer’s perspective. There is no need to spend hours reading the papers referenced, reading their titles is enough (and you can find these in the list of references of other papers anyway), at a push the writer will read their abstracts, no more.

Are there better plots? Assuredly, but giving examples would fill too many pages, so here they are in schematic form 3.

Figure 3

Various schematic story plots that work.

I have found that a popular movie plot is also useful in scientific writing. The author shows you how the story ends even before it starts. When readers have the full picture, they are better able to situate your work in it. They understand how and with whose help you will achieve your results. In addition, they know the scope of your work and are clear about the future work. Graphically, it is represented in 4.

Figure 4

First the ideal system or solution is depicted (here represented by the circle). Then the story tells how this ideal picture comes together: what the author contributes, what others have already contributed [referenced work], and what remains an open field of research (future works). Everything is clear, everything fits nicely, and the reader is more easily convinced of the worth of your contribution.