Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

Difference between ordinary writing and a scientific one

Q: What is the difference between writing an ordinary book and a scientific one? Krishna Madam, as you are familiar with both, you should be able to tell us the difference.

Krishna:

An ordinary book is actually the perception of the author on a particular topic. Perceptions differ from person to person depending on the cognitive analysis of each person. These things vary because each person processes the information differently depending on his mental capabilities.

Perceptions need not always be correct. For instance I read an article on superstitions where the author supported superstitions saying that they have a science base. Actually what the author mentioned as science is pseudo-science and the author didn't know this! This is not the truth but just the author's opinion.

But the author thought it was true and people reading it might think it is true too if they are not critical and scientific thinkers.

Formal writing is particularly used when the person or group of persons we are addressing is not known to us. Formal writing is also used when the recipient of the matter written isn’t too familiar with us.

While writing on ordinary things, your imagination can run wild. You can play a lot with the ideas, express your opinions freely and can create fictitious characters.

Now coming to a science book or article, it should reflect the facts unless it is science fiction.

The author's opinion doesn't matter much in the scientific world. His or her perception should be based on evidence based facts and therefore this should be reflected in the book or write up.

Science writers' creativity differs from that of ordinary writers.

Because they cannot take many creative risks that deviate from scientific facts. They should not deviate from the scientific path.

They should stick to science as much as possible and should be able to make this possible.

That is why I give citations in my articles based on science to show that I am strictly sticking to scientific evidence.

And I am a science writer more than an ordinary writer! Even if I write fiction, scientific facts will be embedded in it and both my thinking and writing always reflect genuine evidence based scientific facts.

I process everything using my scientific knowledge. I do critical thinking.

Therefore, my concepts almost always reflect genuine science. You must have noticed this if you know what genuine science is.

Having said that, I also want to add that science writing can have different forms. The writer should know his readers well. The form in which science writing takes will depend on the purpose of the author and the individuals for whom it is designed for.

Science writing is simply writing on science-related topics. The scientific topics involved are what defines science writing. This writing deals basically with information that has been collected using scientific methods and techniques.

If scientists are writing for their colleagues, the language will be different. It contains lots of jargon , strictly follows rules, and format set by journals.

Using an informal type of writing for situations that demand a formal type of writing wouldn’t be acceptable.

It is intended to be as exact, accurate, clear, honest and precise as it possibly can be. Scientists don't deal in being vague and fudging over the details. Proper scientific writing should clearly outline the subject, describe specific topics only, and at no time allow itself to be biased.

These types will be peer-reviewed and this is not an easy process.

If scientists, journalists, science communicators are writing for laymen, most of the jargon should disappear and the book or article should be as simple as possible. But it should still be exact and accurate and should be based on scientific facts.

The various formats in which science writing comes include research theses, a report, a research paper, a journal article, a blog, fact sheet, magazine article, or video script.

Level of education, knowledge, and target audience will determine the type of terminology used by science writers. Scientific terms will be considered as jargon or nonsense when used for the wrong audience. As a science writer, you’ll need to identify who your target audience is when crafting a scientific document.

If you are writing science fiction, it will be a combination of several forms of writing. How you handle it depends on what you want to convey.

If you want to convey genuine scientific facts using a fictional story, that will be another ball game altogether. While you can play and experiment as you like with your story, you have to be accurate with regard to the scientific facts.

Anyway, all forms of writing are used to pass information across to specific people and to convey special messages. If the messages get across correctly that is enough. The writer has done justice to his job.

There is another angle to writing now.

People these days are using AI to write. I will never do that because I neither trust AI with regard to science nor can agree with 'some stupid machine's opinions'.

But according to new research (1), artificial intelligence-powered writing assistants that autocomplete sentences or offer "smart replies" not only put words into people's mouths, they also put ideas into their heads! That very idea of getting ideas from someone or machine repels me because I respect originality.

It seems, people who used an AI writing assistant that was biased for or against something were twice as likely to write a paragraph agreeing with the assistant, and significantly more likely to say they held the same opinion, compared with people who wrote without AI's help.

The study suggests that the biases baked into AI writing tools—whether intentional or unintentional—could have concerning repercussions for culture and politics, researchers said.

And participants who took several minutes to compose their paragraphs came up with heavily influenced statements. The survey revealed that a majority of the participants did not even notice the AI was biased and didn't realize they were being influenced!

When repeating the experiment with different topics, the research team again saw that participants were swayed by the assistants. Now, the team is looking into how this experience creates the shift, and how long the effects last.

Just as social media has changed the political landscape by facilitating the spread of misinformation and the formation of echo chambers, biased AI writing tools could produce similar shifts in opinion, depending on which tools users choose.

These technologies deserve more public discussion regarding how they could be misused and how they should be monitored and regulated, the researchers said.

This very idea of using AI to write is highly repulsive to me.

And I wonder whether people writing in groups or with co-authors have this same effect of getting influenced. Oh my.

Footnotes:

1. Maurice Jakesch et al, Co-Writing with Opinionated Language Models Affects Users' Views, Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2023). DOI: 10.1145/3544548.3581196

Difference between ordinary writing and a scientific one

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