Common Mistakes in Scientific Writing [or, A Pedant's Paradise]

In scientific writing, proper terminology is everything. I learned early on that many of my favorite turns of phrase were technically incorrect - and I have been working to improve my writing and editing ever since. Below, I've included some of my "favorite" stylistic oddities. . .hopefully this is useful for at least a few readers! This may be old hat for some of you - in that case, please post a comment with your own grammatical grumblings.

"Outcrops" as a verb

Despite rampant misuse, there is no verb form of "outcrop."

Incorrect: "The Barstow Formation outcrops in southern California."

Correct: "The Barstow Formation crops out in southern California."

"Monophyletic clade"

A clade is, by definition, monophyletic. So, save your space and only use one of the two words!

Incorrect: "Dinosauria is a monophyletic clade."

Correct 1: "Dinosauria is monophyletic."

Correct 2: "Dinosauria is a clade."

"Data is. . ."

The word "data" is plural; "datum" is the singular. You're bucking against popular culture, but think of how delightfully smug you can feel whenever you use the words correctly.

Incorrect: "The data is overwhelming."

Correct 1: "The data are overwhelming."

Correct 2: "The datum is overwhelming, which is odd because it's only a single measurement."

"e.g." and "i.e."

"E.g." is an abbreviation from the Latin "exempli gratia", basically translating as "for example." "I.e." is the abbreviated form of the Latin "id est", translating as "that is." The meaning for the former should be pretty clear; the latter is used when one wishes to provide further clarification of a point.

Incorrect 1: "Many dinosaurs are found in the Hell Creek Formation (i.e., Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus)."

Correct 1: "Many dinosaurs are found in the Hell Creek Formation (e.g., Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus).

Incorrect 2: "Bird skeletons are pneumatized; e.g., they are filled with air sacs."

Correct 2: "Bird skeletons are pneumatized; i.e., they are filled with air sacs."

Lower/Upper vs. Early/Late

Unless you have had a solid introduction to geology (and even then, it's easy to forget), most people probably don't know that there is a major nitpicky difference between Upper Cretaceous and Late Cretaceous. The Upper/Lower designation refers to lithostratigraphic divisions of rocks; they are not the same as the geochronologic ages of the rocks. In other words - Upper Cretaceous refers to a physical lump of sedimentary rocks; Late Cretaceous refers to the age of these rocks. Whenever I try to figure out which word to use, I concentrate on whether I'm talking about time (Early/Late) or position in the rock column (Lower/Upper).

Incorrect 1: These Early Cretaceous rocks are full of fossils.

Correct 1: These Lower Cretaceous rocks are full of fossils.

Incorrect 2: Tyrannosaurus is Upper Cretaceous in age.

Correct 2: Tyrannosaurus is Late Cretaceous in age.

Want some more? The style guide for Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (available in PDF format) has lots more great hints and tips!

Have You Accepted the Paleo Project Challenge?

A little over three weeks ago, Dave Hone and I kicked off the 2010 Paleo Project Challenge. Basically, it is an opportunity to finish off those nagging projects (whether they be manuscripts, artwork, blog posts, fossils to prep, or whatever) by the end of the year, or else face public shame. Lazy individuals that we are, we know that unless we make a public commitment to finish some projects, they will never get done!

So far, a number of individuals have accepted the challenge. It's not too late to join in - just post in the comments section. Remember. . .the goal is to finish the project by December 31. Everyone is watching!

Participants in the Paleo Project Challenge
Brian Beatty - paper on meningeal ossification in cetaceans
Andrea Cau - describe new theropod remains from north Africa
Andy Farke - finish paper for ODP; finish paper on ceratopsian anatomy
Nick Gardner - paper piggybacked with one of Casey's
Casey Holliday - either a new croc species description or paper related to frontoparietal fossae
Dave Hone - the necks paper
Heinrich Mallison - finish Plateosaurus CAE paper; sauropod rearing paper; sauropodomorph rapid locomotion paper
Jordan Mallon - Anchiceratops manuscript
Anthony Maltese - sharks scavenging on mosasaur paper; Niobrara ammonite paper
Patty Ralrick - paper on subfossil mass mortality site
Manabu Sakamoto - finish Pachyrhinosaurus drawing; finish and submit theropod bite force paper
Mike Taylor - finally finish the Archbishop sauropod description
Bruce Woolatt - 1/10 scale Quetzalcoatlus northropi flesh restoration
Anonymous - find job; paper for Paleobiology; prep alligator fossil
Jay - finish sauropod description

The 2010 Paleo Project Challenge

Everyone has an unfinished project. Most of us have at least a half dozen. Those partly finished manuscripts, paintings, data sets, and preparation projects. Oh, we started out with good intentions. Maybe we even poured a productive week into it. But then, the honeymoon glow faded. Something else got in the way. The field season, or teaching duties, or another more pressing project, or a grant deadline, or just plain old life circumstances, interrupted us.

Luckily, all of that work doesn't have to go to waste. Why not finish up that project? What are you waiting for? Heck, what am I waiting for?

Regular readers of this blog may remember that Dave Hone and I instituted the "Paleo Paper Challenge" (PPC) last year, in an effort to shame all of us into cleaning our (figurative) research plate. We had pretty remarkable success - although not everyone (including ourselves) were able to finish everything we wanted to, most folks made some major progress. Some papers even made it into publication, in venues like Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and PLoS ONE. Not too shabby.

Not wanting to rest on our laurels, it's time to kick things off for 2010. This year, Dave and I want to pursue a "bigger tent" approach. Why limit the PPC to just academic research? Let's open it up to all paleo enthusiasts! Preparators, artists, researchers, bloggers. . .after all, paleontology does not survive on publication alone. Thus, we are happy to kick off:

The Paleo Project Challenge
Do you have a paper that just needs the finishing touches before it heads off to publication? Is there some half-prepped fossil sitting in a cabinet in the lab? Have you started and finished a big blog post half a dozen times, but never pulled the trigger? Is that masterpiece rendering of a live Tylosaurus still sitting on the easel? Stop sitting around, and finish it!

Here are the rules:
1) Indicate your willingness to participate in the Paleo Project Challenge (PPC) in the blog comment section. You should at a minimum indicate the category it falls under (paper, blog, art, or whatever), and the project (if you can - we totally understand the need for secrecy in some cases!).
2) Do the work! You have until December 31, 2010. Remember, we're all watching.
3) Once you're done, celebrate!

You can read more about it from Dave's perspective here. Now, let's get to work!

My Commitments
1) Write up the ODP results.
2) Finish a long-running paper on ceratopsian anatomy.

What are you going to do? Chime in below in the comments section!

The Paleo Paper Challenge

Dave Hone of Archosaur Musings and I were recently chatting online and were lamenting the inevitable problem of ‘the unfinished paper’. Most researchers have a project or two (or anything up to 20) that were started and then kind of stalled for various reasons – uncooperative co-authors, being unable to find the elusive essential paper, other projects taking priority, or just general malaise. It’s left as a few pages of notes, or unreferenced, without figures or a key analysis complete or whatever. It’s good science and publishable, it’s just not done. Without a good incentive to get them finished off (like a rival group) or them getting out of date (the stuff is interesting but not ground breaking and will not revolutionize the field when it comes out, but it’s not old either) these things can last for ever. Sometimes, all the manuscript needs is one day of solid work to kick the thing out the door!

Both of us have these kinds of papers knocking around and we are far from the only ones. As such with SVP around the corner we decided to issue the Paleo Paper Challenge (or Palaeo Paper Challenge, if you're so inclined). If you have a palaeo paper that really needs to be finished off then we challenge you to sign up here and get it done this year. If so, simply leave a note in the comment thread and we’ll total them all up in a few days and create a register of those taking part (so you can’t back out!). There is no need to let everyone know exactly what it is you are working on (if people want to keep things private, that’s fine) but of course juicy details will be welcome. Dave and I will also both be canvassing at SVP, and if you want to encourage others to join, do please mention this on your own blogs etc.

This should serve as both self-motivation to get the project done and a nice little race to see who can finish first and get their paper(s) submitted or in print. The real challenge of course is simply to get it done, so we are setting January 1, 2010, as your ‘official’ deadline – if you are joining the challenge you’ll have about three months to get it done. There are hundreds if not thousands of these papers languishing on hard drives so let’s try and get a few of them out there!

[NOTE: This post was largely written by Dave. . .I've modified it slightly for posting here. Perhaps this laziness is why I have so many half-finished papers sitting on my hard drive right now.]

Advice from a Nobel Laureate

This evening I attended a talk by Eric Cornell, who shared the Nobel prize in physics in 2001 for his work on the creation of the first Bose-Einstein condensate. The talk was accessible, entertaining, and engaging--a rarity in any field of science, let alone condensed matter physics.

During the question and answer period, a young woman in the front row (probably no more than 12 or 13 years old) asked what she should study if she wants to be a successful scientist. Dr. Cornell mentioned the usual suspects - take courses in math and science. And then he added - work on your writing! This is an important word of wisdom, and one that is often neglected.

Good communication skills are a foundation of science - if we can't share our work with friends and colleagues, and have them understand the research, what's the point? So, to all of you students out there, work on your writing skills! Practice writing, get honest critiques from someone who has the time and honesty to really hammer your work, and then learn from the experience. And, practice communicating your research through other methods--oral presentations, posters, email, and the Internet. Even today, after completing a Ph.D., I am still working on my communication skills--I suspect it will be a lifelong task!

How to Write a Paper (link)

Dave Hone's excellent blog, Archosaur Musings, has a post on how to write and publish a scientific paper. It's a great insider's view to the publication process - I certainly couldn't have said it better myself!