
My biology paper in Science - nabla9
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2862
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biounit
A better title for your link would be - "OUR biology paper in Science." Big
congratulations on the paper. Impressive.

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Rainymood
>ZYX _Y_ = GATTACA TAG AGT CTA.

Subtle ;) I like it.

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guard-of-terra
That's nice!

Turns out, biologists (many kinds of scientists probably) are in need of
computer modelling, information retrieval and so on. Naturally it gives
opportunity to us IT folks, even without terribly much scientific background.

I've co-authored a biology paper too. Here is the resulting code:
[https://github.com/alamar/microbe](https://github.com/alamar/microbe)

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myrloc
Looks fascinating. Does anyone want to summarize?

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anc84
If papers themselves were written like that, "science" would be so much more
approachable!

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johncolanduoni
Unfortunately this is hard to do because (a) insufficient time (b)
insufficient number of Scott Aaronsons. I struggle to think of anyone else who
can write about science in such an accessible way (without convenient
misconceptions and falsehoods).

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beambot
Not sure that's true... It takes a lot of effort to translate text into
concise science speak ("I'd have written a shorter letter if only I had more
time").

This would have a huge added benefit of making per review easier, making
science more approachable, and making it all less pedantic.

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the_duke
Domain specific language and formalisms exist for a reason. They enable
efficient communication for people who know the field.

Scientific papers are not written for the layman with an interest, but to
communicate the results of your research to others in the field.

Admittedly a lot of papers are also just written to keep your University from
giving your job to someone else. But publish or perish is another issue.

I agree that there should be more scientists writing articles / blogs that
make their research approachable and engaging for the layman, but that does
not extend to papers, in my opinion.

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Arnt
Or, perhaps: They enable grants.

I've only ever helped write a single grant application. My parts of that had
to be rewritten with more use of passive verbs and general neutral-sounding
but largely vacuous prose.

I thought it's like those chick jokes. You don't offer comments about random
women's gorgeous breasts because you really want to, it's just expected in
some contexts. It tells the audience you're one of the guys. Overlong
sentences where all that's done is passively done inform the grant reviewers
that the author a proper scientist who should be enabled to continue with
valuable research.

