A Lesson from a Nobel-Prize Winner: How to tell the story of your results

Many scientists don’t realize it, but a good scientific article is like a novel: they both tell a story [1]. A well-written research article tells us about the search for the answer to a question. When we read the article, we’re introduced to what is known and unknown, which leads us to the research question. Then we follow the action of the Methods and Results, until we reach the climax: the answer to the question. The story finishes with a Discussion of what the answer means, which usually suggests new questions for new heroes (other scientists) to pursue—and these heroes don’t reward the story-teller with gold, but with citations!

One of the great heroes of science, Nobel Prize Winner Shinya Yamanaka, and his colleague, Kazutoshi Takahashi, give a master class in scientific storytelling in an article [2] that was a key to Yamanaka’s Nobel Prize. (If you want to download the article so that you can read the whole thing, you can get it for free from Cell’s open archive.)

To learn how to organize your articles, study articles in high-impact English-language journals

In the fields that I'm familiar with—biology, biotechnology, and medicine—there is often a huge difference in the quality of writing between what is published in high-impact journals, and what is published in little journals. It seems to me that it's probably a positive feedback cycle: Because high-impact journals are more prestigious, more people want to publish there, so the editors can afford to demand clearer, better-organized writing. Because the writing is better, more researchers read the articles and find useful information and ideas in them. This leads to more citations, maintaining these journals' high impact factor. I think that it's not only the quality of the science that makes journals like Nature, Science, and British Medical Journal so popular and prestigious; it's also how clearly the ideas are presented in the pages of those journals.

The articles in these kinds of journals are worth using as models, even if you don't think that your study will be published in such a prestigious journal. First, you can be almost certain that the English in these journals is correct. Second, the way that the ideas are organized and presented in these journals will help you make your ideas clearer and more interesting to a wider range of readers, which will help your research get the attention it deserves.

I suggest that you find some articles that you find interesting in high-impact journals, and then make an outline of the main ideas in the article, to see how the authors organize their ideas. This will teach you how to outline and organize your own articles. To show you how to do it, I've made an outline of the main ideas in the introduction to an article entitled Oxytocin bolus versus oxytocin bolus and infusion for control of blood loss at elective caesarean section: double blind, placebo controlled, randomised trial (Sheehan et al. 2011) from BMJ (British Medical Journal).

Good Paragraph Organization: An example from a classic article

We have a classic article for our first example of scientific writing with the kind of good paragraph organization that I explained in my last post. The article is the original short communication in which Watson and Crick proposed what is now an accepted structure for DNA (you can get the complete, original article for free here). I have deleted all the sentences except those at the beginning, and sometimes the end, of each paragraph. This way you can see how the most important sentences are in these places.

Before we look at their article, think about what you know about the structure of DNA. Then as you read the article, notice how the beginnings and endings of the paragraphs are almost like an abstract. These sentences summarize what most scientists know about the structure of DNA, plus some details that are of basic importance to geneticists, cell biologists, biochemists, and others in similar fields. This is how you should write your articles: the beginnings (and sometimes the endings) of paragraphs should be almost like an abstract of your work.

The Key To Scientific Writing In English: Paragraphs with a point

"The beginning (often just the first sentence) should state clearly the subject of the paragraph...The first sentence...is the key."
–Robert A. Day, Scientific English: A guide for scientists and other professionals, 2 ed. (Oryx Press, 1995)

You're a scientist. You've studied English and you can read scientific papers in English. You understand the speakers at international conferences and enjoy talking with your colleagues from other countries. But your papers are returned with comments like, "Please improve the English."

I know scientists who have been asked to improve the English in their papers even after they have paid for professional translation. Some have even had their paper checked by a native-speaker or a professional proofreading service. But then their paper was returned with a comment like this: "Please have this paper checked by a native speaker or a professional proofreading service." When I've looked at their papers, I've seen that the problem wasn't grammar or vocabulary. The problem was organization.

Learning how to organize their paragraphs with good English-language style has helped my students and editing clients more than anything else. Their reviewers' comments have become more positive – some reviewers have even thanked them for writing their papers so clearly. I've been able to understand their papers more easily, which makes it easier to find and correct the little errors in their grammar and vocabulary. And my students have also noticed the change in their own writing – "Yes! It's clearer now," is a typical comment that I hear when students see the change in their writing.

There are usually just two types of paragraphs in good English-language science and technical writing: 

1. Most paragraphs begin with the main or most important idea, then add details. The main idea of the paragraph is usually clearly written in the first sentence. If this idea is complicated, sometimes two or even three sentences are necessary. This structure often works well in the results section: give an overview of a result, then then details. For example, start by writing that predictions from modeling agreed well with experimental observations, then give details about how well they agreed. 
2. Some paragraphs begin with an introduction to the main idea, add details, and build to a conclusion at the end. This often works well in the discussion section of a paper: Start with one of your results. Discuss the result, perhaps by comparing your result with results from similar studies. End with a conclusion, perhaps by suggesting why your results differ from those of other studies.

There are three reasons why this style of organizing paragraphs works so well. First, when you put the main or most important idea at the beginning, readers instantly know what the paragraph is about. This helps them to clearly understand the relationships between all the ideas that you are presenting. This clarity will help if you or your readers have any problems with the English in the paragraph.

The second reason why this style works well is because readers expect important information to be in certain places. In English, these places are the beginning and the end of paragraphs and sections. Some of my readers might be wondering why their high school teachers taught them to organize paragraphs in a different way, or didn't teach them that paragraphs need organization. This is because their native languages organize texts in a different way. This kind of organization is a part of each language, just like grammar and vocabulary. In fact, organization is so important that the study of how different languages organize texts is a part of discourse analysis, which is a sub-field of linguistics. So don't make the mistake of assuming that texts are organized the same way in every language. If you do, you risk confusing your readers. Many papers that I've read were confusing because the writer put unimportant details in places where we expect important ideas to be in English.

The third reason why this style works well is because your readers can quickly find the information they are looking for. The beginning of each paragraph tells what it is about, so it is easy for the readers to find what they want. And if you make things easy for your readers, you increase your chances of getting another citation.

Starting with next Sunday's post, we'll look at some examples of paragraphs and articles from the scientific literature, and have some different exercises that will help you with paragraph organization. Until then, here's an exercise to test your understanding of this lesson:

EXERCISE: Which paragraphs in this post are like the first type of paragraph above? Which are like the second? Keep reading to find the answers.