Entering the Conversation

Liberman essentially is addressing scientists to work on their lack of good writing skills. He attacks scientists about lying or rewording the way their real story is supposed to be displayed. If there is so much controversy over science and its important connection with the public audience, wouldn’t scientists be trying to write the best they could so that the public can fully comprehend what they are saying? Science only wants and needs an active public audience for financial support. They know that if the public is not involved, then they will have no way to perform experiments to then further create and research new things. 

Liberman’s blog post is an excellent source for people who are looking for answers about the mysterious ways of scientific writing. It lets the public audience know that scientists do not always word things the way they are supposed to be worded. They either beat around the bush or create white lies to make the information appear to be more glamorous. He used excellent sources for evidentiary support including, the story about children’s capabilities to learn better at school by taking fish oil supplements. The actual scientific study repeated itself three times and grammatically made no sense whatsoever. However, the professional science writer provided a subject to base the results off of, he mentioned the drug involved and how often it should be taken and lastly he concluded the paragraph by stating the supplements factually showed an increase in performance at school where children have to pay attention. This evidence is very helpful to the public audience because it shows how much work goes into bringing the public into the light about scientific discoveries and projects. It’s not all about the scientists because the “bad science writers” have to go in and clean up everything the scientific study really said. 

There are several ways to go about addressing and mending the conflict with awful science writing. Perhaps scientists could be required to attend some form of writing workshop once or twice a year so that they are always reminded of improving their writing skills. Maybe the bad science writers could return the scientific studies that are given to them and request the scientists reword what they wrote the first time so that the bad science writers job is a little easier. If it became so difficult for bad science writers to determine the gist of a study, then they should enforce a rule that they will not post the information if it is not clearly stated in the study they are given. If any of those options were to fail or to be to far fetched, then maybe people who are seeking to be in journalism and newspaper writing could see this article as a job opportunity. After all, Mark Liberman’s title of his blog post is “We need more Bad Science Writers.” If this post becomes popular maybe newspaper staffs will take into consideration the need and demand for more professional science writers.