CBR103: Scientific Thinking and Writing

Scientific Writing and Thinking (1 credit)

Timing 10am-11am on Saturdays Coordinator: (Dr Shweta Ramdas) Instructors: Shweta, Latha Readings: Mimi Zeiger - Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers; Strunk and White - The Elements of Style

Course Objectives

1. Be able to read a scientific paper and summarize the important messages
2. Be able to interpret scientific data
3. Be able to effectively write a scientific manuscript or research report

Course Structure

Weeks 1,2: Basics of writing in the sciences

1. Principles of effective writing
2. Sentence structure (verbs versus nouns, cutting the clutter, varying sentence structure)
3. Writing strong paragraphs

Readings

1. Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Watson and Crick 1953.

Week 3: Structure of scientific papers

Reading:

1. How to read a scientific paper: https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPaper.pdf
2. The structure of scientific papers (the hourglass model): https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bes2.1258

Week 4: Reporting numbers in science

1. Reporting baselines
2. Cherry-picking

Weeks 5,6,7: Interpreting data and summarizing papers

1. Things to look for in a figure

Weeks 9-10: Bringing it all together: practice

Optional Readings

1. On Writing Well. William Zinsser
2. Calling Bullshit, Carl Bergstrom
3. The visual display of quantitative information, Edward Tufte