How does science translate, literally and literarily? How is science transformed as it moves out from the lab and the field into the broader scientific and lay communities?
What role does writing play in all of this, in how science is done, in how it becomes part of the official record in a journal or conference presentation? What gets lost in the translation from an article couched in equations and technical terms to an article in the Times or Discover? Who should be writing about science, or perhaps we should ask who's writing we should be reading? Is there a role for "unofficial" channels like blogs and videos (the infamous -- and annual -- dance your Ph.D. thesis contest comes to mind!)?
Follow the course through the blog here.
Introduction
Field notes
Objectivity (more on field notes and observations)
Material Science (the tools of the trade for field notes)
The. Article. (what counts as science writing? only the article?)
What do journal articles and romance novels have in common? (Anatomy of a scientific paper)
The Short and Sweet of It: Writing Titles and Tweets
Itchy writing (Science journalism take one)
Do not use dialect unless your ear is good (slinging scientific jargon)
Gee-whiz, science? (how do good writers draw the reader into the science)
Fact or fiction (can you communicate science through fiction?)
Poetic science (should scientists be taught to write poetry?)
Punch lines (humor in science)
The End
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2 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience