Avoid hyperbole in scientific writing.
Hyperbole can take many different forms. Nearly all should be avoided in scientific writing. Avoid calling previous work “pioneering”, “novel”, or “foundational”, unless it truly is. Don’t call a study “comprehensive.” They rarely are. Don’t say that you’ve conducted “detailed work.” You’re a scientist. You’re supposed to do detailed work. Avoid absolutes like “never”, “always”, […]
Oh, snap! A dig at a badly written introduction
An unfortunate order of words
A quote from Sports Minister Hugh Robertson, from this article. “The British themselves are pretty stoic; there is a long tradition of watching sport in rain macs or listening to Cliff Richard or whatever.” Come on. Cliff Richard isn’t that bad.
Deep thoughts about editing
Not sure where I found this, but it’s classic!
An abstract that says nothing
This abstract comes from a recently published in an atmospheric science journal: Previous studies have shown that numerical diffusion plays a crucial role in the ability of mesoscale models to reproduce features similar to sub-meso motions found in observations, particularly in terms of spectral energy distribution. In this study, the impacts of surface heterogeneity and […]
“Cold” equivalent potential temperature?
As scientists, we need to be precise in our writing. Evgeni Fedorovich at the University of Oklahoma has tried to keep me honest about writing about “cold temperatures”. Know that the air can be “cold” or “warm”, but temperatures are “high” or “low.” I want to take this argument one step further. It makes no […]
Past or Present Tense?
Which is correct? A. Wetzel et al. (2004) show a negative correlation between snow density and air temperature that explains 52% of the variance. B. Wetzel et al. (2004) showed a negative correlation between snow density and air temperature that explains 52% of the variance. The difference is that A uses the present tense “show”, […]
The importance of proper citation
Just recently I discovered a published article that neglected to cite the whole field of the topic that they were investigating. The article did have citations to the statistical methods and other papers that were related to their work, but not a single paper had been cited that had performed the same statistical analyses that […]
Baloney Detection Kit and brainpickings.org
This link from Bogdan Antonescu: The Baloney Detection Kit: A 10-Point Checklist for Science Literacy In fact, brainpickings.org has a lot of good posts about books, creativity, life, and writing. Enjoy surfing!
Case studies: Do I need multiple cases to make my point?
My colleague Russ Schumacher and I have been discussing a paper that we want to write about banded precipitation along the Front Range of the Rockies. Russ has seen multiple events each winter, and the processes that produce these bands are not well understood, even though we have already written a couple of papers on […]
