Offensive words

Some words can upset scientists in a big way. Having mastery of the basics by avoiding silly mistakes is needed for a good mark. So here are few words not to use and a few words to be careful about how you use them. I'm sure most of you have them nailed but there are always a few.

'Prove'

Scientists don't 'prove' anything: they use data to support or falsify a theory.

'Believe'

Without evidence science is a fundamentally agnostic endeavor. Therefore, something in science can only be believed once there is evidence for its existence. And when that happens there are more appropriate words to use than 'believe', like 'support', 'indicate', 'demonstrate' and so on.

'Data'

This word is actually plural. 'The data is flawed' and 'The data indicates a beard module' are incorrect. It should be 'The data are flawed' and, more subtly, 'The data indicate a beard module.' One easy way to get it right if you have difficulties is to substitute 'data' in your mind with the word 'people'. 'The people is flawed' and 'The people indicates...' just sound wrong - and they are.

'Affect' and 'effect'

'Affect' is most commonly used as a verb (e.g. Having his brain removed affected the patient's judgement). 'Effect' is most commonly used as a noun (e.g. The effect of having no brain was poor decision making by the patient). However, they can switch. When 'affect' is a noun it means feeling or emotion (e.g. the patient presented with blunted affect.) When 'effect' is a verb it means to bring about (e.g. The new drugs effected the patient's recovery from coma).

'Literally'

This grinds my gears. The need to say 'literally' indicates that the utterance should not be taken metaphorically. For instance, on Scrubs JD literally becomes a deer in the headlights when he can't think of an answer to a medical question (in one of his frequent surreal asides). However, in modern parlance it is often used like the verbal equivalent of bold - for emphasis - and I have seen it creeping into writing too. 'He literally glowed with pride', 'he was literally mental', 'she literally exploded with anger'. These don't describe an extremely proud person, a rather kooky individual and someone who is very angry; they describe someone emitting light, someone who needs to be committed and a dead person.

'Bias' and 'Biased'

This can take several forms: the singular noun (e.g., 'There was bias'), the plural noun (e.g., 'There were biases'), and the verb (e.g., 'The data were biased'). If you get confused swap in the word 'colour': 'There was colour'; 'There were colours' and 'The data were coloured'.

'Phenomenon' and 'Phenomena'

Singular and plural respectively. 'The phenomenon intrigued the farmers' and 'The phenomena had been observed over two months on the farm.' 'Phenomenons' would not really be used in scientific writing.

'Signficant', 'Insignificant' and ' Non-significant'

Which of these three words shouldn't you use in scientific writing? The middle one. Data are never insignificant in statistical terms, they are non-significant or they fail to reach significance.

'Genes want'

In Evolutionary Psychology although it is instructive to talk about genes wanting to replicate this implies some sort of intention and it will upset evo. nerds.

'Less' and 'fewer'

The rule is 'fewer' if you can count the items (i.e. plural), 'less' if you can't (i.e singular). Supermarkets perennially get this wrong at their checkouts, ad campaigns (e.g. Tesco's "Use less bags") and even corporate material (like on this J Sainsbury plc page where "use less bags" is also used).

Any emotional words

Salting and peppering your writing with emotional adjectives is not needed.

'In my opinion' or 'personally'

Probably ok for Consciousness but really you should leave phrases like this at the door.

Verbal overgrowth

Superlative writing is imbued with an unornamented elegance rather than appropriating a sesquipedalian demeanor. Or put better, the best writing is simple, not complex. The advice here is: Don’t be pretentious and puffed up with your vocabulary or style. It's all over the essays on the hub, this strange top-button-done-up register.

I am sure many of you have right-clicked and selected 'Synonyms' (or for the geekier, Shift+F7) thinking that you were cunningly upping your essay’s intellectual prowess.

You are not alone. 86% of Stanford undergrads admitted to doing the same. The figure is probably higher once you factor in the dishonest and those in denial.

However, as you should have felt at the start of this post, dressing up complexity as sophistication is annoying, fogging up the clarity of reading.

At best, markers are going to perceive this as immature writing; at worst, as a (deceitful) substitute for actual understanding. In any case, you are not doing yourself any favours.

So, ironically, despite your best attempts at coming across more intelligently you will achieve the precise opposite by injecting some collagen into your words.

Cognitive science supports my point. In Oppenheimer (2006) “[f]ive studies [on undergrads] demonstrate[d] that the loss of fluency due to needless complexity in a text negatively impacts raters’ assessments of the text’s authors.”

In short, readers really won’t like you pimpin' your vocab and style for no good reason. I leave you with this spot-on quotation:

"Fools ignore complexity;
pragmatists suffer it;
experts avoid it;
geniuses remove it."
(Alan Perlis)

(I should add my point is specifically about unnecessary complexity of vocabulary. This is not a diktat against complexity of vocabulary per se because sometimes longer words do communicate meaning more piquantly than their horizontally-challenged siblings. So, as some clever person once said, make it as simple as it can be, and no simpler.)