We are terrified by the possibility that ChatGPT will be our overlord.

Is this misdirection? “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”

Clear scientific writing makes distinctions between what was known, what was done, how we interpret the results, and what we think this means about cells or brains or leptons or whatever.

We aren’t writing tweets. It takes more than 200 characters to explain something new.

This distinction is being lost as journals want shorter, punchier papers and the discussion and results are being merged. But it’s an important logical (epistemological?) distinction. What was observed is different from how I interpret it.

Clear writing isn’t punchy writing.

When I am writing weasel words, I need to think carefully about WHY I am uncertain about what I’m writing. When I find myself writing this way, it’s always a clue that I don’t know enough to be writing yet.

Don’t see weasel words as a problem, see them as a place where more thought/work is needed

High school English teachers don’t like the passive, for good reason. But the passive is useful. Passive most often appears in science to mean “we did x, if you did x we believe you would see this too”. This distinguishes method and result from interpretation.

A critical distinction.

Don’t use acronyms.

Yes, acronyms make the document shorter, but they make it incomprehensible to people who aren’t deeply embedded in your field. (Acronyms used in undergrad text books are ok.)

So much of the kappa B pathway came from the fly dorsal ventral pathway. Toll gave is the TLRs. But no (young-ish) immunologist I’ve ever talked to has any idea what the T in TLR means.

It’s a good story.