Basic Scientific Writing in English Lecture 1

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Basic Scientific Writing in EnglishLecture 1

• Professor Ralph Kirby
• Faculty of Life Sciences
• Extension 7323
• Room B322
• Lectures will be available at www.dls.ym.edu.tw

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Semesters Timetable

• 15th September Lecture 1. Introduction and
  Hypothesis Based Research
• 22nd September Lecture 2. The Process of Writing
• 29th September Lecture 3. Write the paper in
  English Start Assignment 1
• 6th October Lecture 4. Reading and understanding
  two short papers
• 13th October Lecture 5. Correction of an
  Abstract
• 19th October Last day to hand in Assignment 1
• 20th October Lecture 6. Model answers to
  assignment 1
• 27th October Lecture 7. Active and passive voice
  for verbs
• 3rd November Lecture 8. Subject-verb agreement
  and collective nouns
• 10th November Examinations
• 17th November Lecture 9. Lists. Start Assignment
  
• 24th November Holiday
• 30th November Last day to hand in assignment 2
• 1st December Lecture 10. Model answers to
  assignment 2.
• 8th December Lecture 11. Quotation Marks
• 15th December Start Assignment 3
• 15th December Lecture 12. Phases and Clauses
• 22nd December No lecture. Work on assignment 3
• 28th December Last day to hand in assignment 3

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Hypothesis Based Research

• Scientific Writing like research is hypothesis
  driven
• Before 1600AD in the west, there was a philosophy
  based approach to the world
• Plato
• Artistole
• Thomas Aquinas

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• After 1600AD. There was the so-called
  enlightenment, where science began to exclude
  philosophy as a source of ideas
• Galileo Solar system
• Newton Gravity
• Harvey Medicine
• Note even outside science directly, the
  scientific approach became the most important,
  for example, in law.

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What are the differences

• Before 1600AD, the idea itself and its
  relationship to others was most important. There
  was no testing to destruction.
• After 1600AD, the idea must be consistent with
  the world as it really exists, that is, the idea
  can be tested experimentally and shown to be
  right or wrong
• This is the basis of hypothesis base research and
  all scientific paper writing

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• Hypothesis
• An idea to explain a phenomena or event
• Research
• The testing of the idea experimentally
• Thus hypothesis based research is the
  identification of a problem, the development of
  an explanation of the problem, the carrying out
  of a series of tests to show if the hypothesis is
  true or false and finally, the publication of the
  hypothesis and the results of its testing to the
  world as a whole.

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Simple example of Hypothesis based Research

• Kocks Postulate (or hypothesis) I
• There is a disease called foot and mouth that
  affects pigs
• A virus FMv can be isolated from diseased pigs
• Hypothesis that FMv is the causative agent of
  foot and mouth disease

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• Testing
• Identify disease free pigs
• Identify diseased pigs
• Carry out isolation procedure for FMv on both
  groups of animals
• Inject result of FMv isolations from both
  sources into a series of disease free pigs
• If only pigs injected with material from the
  diseased pigs get foot and mouth and the virus
  correlates across the two infected groups, the
  FMv is the causative agent

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• However, problems begin to occur when it is not
  easy to carry out tests in a simple way
• Problem What is the cause of AIDS
• Hypothesis It is caused by the virus HIV
• Testing
• Identify disease free humans
• Identify humans with AIDS
• Isolate HIV from both groups
• Inject disease free humans with samples from both
  isolations
• If only humans injected with material from AIDS
  patients, the HIV is the causative agent
• This is unethical!!!!!

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Alternative Indirect Proof

• Isolate a related virus to HIV, simian
  immunodeficency virus, SIV
• Test Kocks postulate on animals using SIV
• Sequence the genomes of HIV and SIV and show they
  are closely related
• Transfer Kocks postulate across the species
  barrier
• Note
• Some people still do not believe HIV causes AIDS
• Think about the human prion disease HSE (Human
  spongioform-encephalopathy or mad cow disease)

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Paper Writing

• The foot and mouth paper would be easy to
  write.
• The HIV paper would be much more difficult to
  write
• The HSE hypothesis is extremely difficult to
  prove to satisfaction
• Most scientific paper writing is close to HIV
  problem in its nature

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• Thus, the following are needed in detail
• Explanation of previous research and hypotheses
• Explanation of the new hypothesis
• A description of the experiments that test the
  new hypothesis and may be the old ones too
• A comprehensive outline of the results of the
  experiments
• An analysis of the results and how they affect
  the new and old hypotheses.
• A placing of the above in the broader context of
  the subject

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Why English?

• Most scientific papers in the 20th century were
  published in English, creating a scientific
  terminology that is English based
• Thus, there is no need to reinvent terms for new
  ideas and concepts in a new language. For
  example, new words were created for restriction
  enzyme in French, German and Afrikaans
• Understood by the largest number of scientists
  throughout the world
• English is a flexible language with many words
  for similar things that identify small
  differences and this provides a very fiexible
  framework for scientists to work from. For
  example house, dwelling, home, cottage,
  habitation.

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Particular problems for Chinese 1st Language
Speakers when writing scientific English

• These problems are not limited to Chinese 1st
  Language Speakers, but the divergence of both
  spoken and written Chinese from English can cause
  these problems to be worse.
• Use of definate and indefinate articles
• Use of gerunds, infinatives and participles
• Conditional sentences
• Prepositions and prepositional phases
• Word order
• Tenses and the passive tense in particular
• Synonyms
• We will come back to these later, so dont worry
  is you dont know what some of these problems are

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Approach in this course

• Seminars on writing scientific English
  identifying particular problems
• Group practice at analysing some simple papers in
  English
• Identification of the conventions used when
  writing a scientific paper in English
• Analysis of a number of English scientific papers
  written by Chinese 1st language speakers to help
  the identification of the common errors
• Writing of a very short paper in English based on
  some provided results