Interlude: Superheroes, Passive Voice, and Word Functions
Here's my latest curated round-up of the best tips, tools, and resources on scientific and medical writing.
💌 Round-up
💻 From My Desk
How Superheroes Can Help You Find Passive Voice
Academic authors started overusing passive voice to make their writing sound more objective. Although we are seeing more support for active voice, you might struggle to notice passive voice in your text. With this simple test, you can enlist superheroes to help you find passive voice in your writing.
The Main Functions of Words in Sentences
Many academic authors learn to write by mimicking what they read. But few receive formal training in writing or know the fundamentals of sentence structure. If you understand the basic components of a sentence, then you can more easily construct well-written sentences and clear, engaging content.
👓 Reading
Trends and Characteristics of Retracted Articles in the Biomedical Literature, 1971 to 2020
Researchers evaluated more than 5,000 articles retracted from biomedical journals. They found that scientific misconduct—most often duplication, plagiarism, and fabrication of data—was the most common reason for retraction. More than two-thirds of the articles were retracted for multiple reasons.
Good Presentation Skills Benefit Careers — and Science
"An individual might not want to spend 5 hours improving their hour-long presentation, but 50 audience members might collectively waste 50 hours listening to that individual’s mediocre effort....An effective presentation can enhance the research and critical-thinking skills of the audience, in addition to what it does for the speaker."
Preparing Accessible and Understandable Clinical Research Participant Information Leaflets and Consent Forms: A Set of Guidelines from an Expert Consensus Conference
"...these recommendations are informed by the current literature and have been ratified by expert stakeholders....[they] will help investigators and sponsors to consistently and efficiently produce more accessible clinical research Participant Information Leaflets/Informed Consent Forms."
Survey Finds Lack of Diversity Among Journal Editors
"Overall, more work clearly needs to be done to establish an inclusive environment for sexual and gender minorities in medicine and science; this applies for journals as well."
🧰 Tools
Hemingway Editor
If you find that even with superheroes, you still feel unsure of whether your sentence is passive, Hemingway Editor will highlight the passive phrases in your writing. The app will also point out unnecessary adverbs, long sentences, long words that can be replaced with short words, and more.
💬 Quote
"All research scientists know that writing in the passive voice is artificial; they are not disembodied observers, but people doing research." – Rupert Sheldrake, author and biologist
Thank you so much for reading.
Warmly,
Crystal
