I was excited to come across a just-published paper this morning in a top management journal on a topic I am studying. I read the abstract a few times, and to be honest, I had only a fuzzy idea what it said. The English was impressive, but filled with phrases that sounded good but were not clear and precise. I asked ChatGPT to translate it into plain English and then looked at the representative quotes from this qualitative study to understand what it showed. It occurred to me that the quality of science not writing is important in reports of our research. I am afraid that in my field of industrial-organizational psychology and management, often peer reviewers favor what sounds good rather than what makes good science.
Science Is Not Humanities
As I have argued before, often our scientific reports are written in a style that is more like humanities, that is, scimanities. Many writers display a remarkable skill with the English language, but do not clearly and precisely explain their points. Many times the writing sounds good, and might have an emotional impact, but the science does not come through clearly. Claims are made, for example, that one variable explains why two others are correlated, but rather than explaining supporting evidence, authors merely slap a citation or two at the end of the sentence. Look up the citation and you find that this source does not provide evidence for the claim, the authors merely speculated about it at the end of their paper. To cite such a paper is to refer to authority (that an expert knows the truth because they are an expert) not evidence. To rely on authority is reasonable in humanities writing where people are discussing ideas. It is not okay in science where we are interested in findings from structured investigations, not the opinions of experts (unless we are doing a study of expert opinion).
Quality of Science Not Writing Is Important
The purpose of scientific communication is to clearly and precisely explain the methods and results of our investigations. Scientific reports begin with an introduction that provides the purpose of the research and gives a background to put the research in context. If we are testing a theory, we explain the theory and how it led to our hypotheses. This all must be written as clearly and precisely as possible. The variables we are studying need to be defined without ambiguity, and the methods used to measure those variables should be explained and justified. There is no room for phrases that sound good but have ambiguous meaning. We are not trying to appeal to feelings or values. Science is a system of inquiry that strives for objectivity and reproducibility. We do that with clear definition of terms, and transparency in what we did and found.
Tips for Clear Scientific Writing
The purpose of a research report is to clearly communicate the science. Since science is evidence-based, this means focusing on evidence, both background evidence and the new evidence from the research being described. A few suggestions.
- Minimize jargon: Some terms are necessary as they describe the phenomena of interest. These are the names of constructs and variables like job satisfaction or intrinsic motivation. But excessive jargon can hide rather than illuminate.
- Define concepts: Each term that is used should be defined, unless they are so well-known that a definition is unnecessary. Providing a definition assures that you are making clear what you consider the term to be, as not every term has a universal meaning. Employee engagement means motivation to academic researchers in my field, but it can mean job attitudes to practitioners.
- Avoid ideological language: Ideological terms are purposely infused with value-judgment and emotional content that we strive to avoid in scientific communication. We want people to evaluate our claims and conclusions based solely on evidence and not ideological positions so our findings speak to everyone and not just those aligned with our point of view.
- Clearly explain theoretical ideas: Our theories explain relationships among the variables in our studies. They should be carefully explained so that readers understand the basis for hypotheses.
- Focus on method and results: The heart of a scientific report is the description of what was done and what was found. The description of methods used in an investigation should be complete so readers understand precisely what was done. Results should be completely reported. All the analyses conducted should be provided and justified.
- Avoid questionable research practices: HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known) and p-hacking (reanalyzing data until statistical results are found) are common practices that should be avoided. The research report should honestly explain what was done. The original hypotheses should be presented rather than changing hypotheses to match the results. The analyses should be pre-planned. Exploratory analyses should be presented as such to maintain transparency.
When it comes to research reports quality of science not writing is important. Those reports should be written clearly and completely, with the goal of providing the reader with as objective a view as possible about what was done and found.
Image generated by FLUX 1.1 Pro. “Image of a male scientist reading a book and looking puzzled with a question mark over his head.” “Make the aspect wider.”
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