Period Reports

It seems as though I've come to a point in my education when there is an extreme emphasis on writing and not so much on mixing chemical A with B. We've been recently notified that our funding agency is willing to grant us some more money. This is good news. The bad news is that they are holding this money ransom until we turn in our delinquent period report which was due a month ago. Prof. Heller has not told me how much money there is at stake here, but its clear that there is just enough that he's willing to have someone else write the report for him and turn it in, no questions asked. I've written 4 such reports since I've been here (more on the topic of scientific writing later) and it really is a joke. The amount of progress which is actually made on the chemistry is painfully small. The first time I was to write the report I just assumed it was OK to delete the old news and fill in the new results. Not so, I learned, as the funding weinies apparently can notice that the background and strategy sections are the same, so they just assume that you've done no work. Its much more effective to rewrite the entire document even if you provide absolutely no new results with a slightly different word order. The bean counters glance at the document, realize the paragraph sizes have changed, then send off the check. This certainly says something about the capabilities of those who hold the purse strings.

Since I'm not the only one on the budget, these excersices involve compiling the reports of my coworkers. The quality of writing is poor to say the least, partially out of apathy, but mosly out of not being able to effectively communicate. The common public perception of science writing is that it is dry and boring. I categorically agree with this, however, good science writing clearly conveys a message, and boring tediuousness like grammar is essential. It becomes much more tedious when correcting the grammar of others.

I've been request to teach a lab course which carries a writing credit on the undergraduates transcripts for next semester. I'm sure I'll have much more to say on the topic of writing in science after I start to read some of their reports.