Anya: Hello and welcome to Red Penned, a podcast on writing across the disciplines. I’m your host, Anya Ricketson, a third year English major at UGA. This season is called Intro Body Conclusion, and I’ll be focusing on and writing assignments. In this episode, I’ll be chatting with Ana Milewski.

Ana: My name is Ana Milewski. I’m a third year undergrad here at the University of Georgia. 

Anya: Ana is currently working on her degree. In microbiology with a minor in applied biotechnology. She also does research in a medical mycology lab.

Ana: I plan to go to grad school to pursue a PhD in microbiology or a similar related field.

Anya: This past semester, Ana wrote a scientific paper titled Survival of the Fittest: Studying The Pathogenicity of Cryptococcus Neo-form-en-ess? Neo-form-ens? How do you pronounce that?

Ana: Yeah, Pathogenicity in Cryptococcus neoformans.

Anya: The paper overviews her research on the effect that the gene SSN6 and its congenial pair have on the pathogenesis of the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans.

Ana: Basically, Cryptococcus neoformans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen, which just means, like, if you’re immunocompromised, like, you’re a cancer patient or you have HIV or AIDS, this is more likely to infect you and get you sick. So the research that I did last semester, that’s when I wrote this paper, was on the pathogenicity of Cryptococcus neoformans, which is basically its ability to cause disease and then kill its host.

Anya: Ana’s paper is a scientific paper, which means it was written for the purpose of sharing her own original research with other scientists who can then review it. The goal of this kind of paper is to inform, not impress. They must be highly readable, clear, accurate, and concise. I asked Ana what she thinks the most important thing about scientific papers is.

Ana: Coming to a conclusion about why my discoveries that I made in this paper are important to the broader science community, not just for this specific organism, but say, you know, there could be similar genes in other organisms that are also causing disease and killing people. People who are studying that may read this paper and be like, oh, well, I can use this information and use it in my own experiments or companies, for example, when they’re trying to design products or drugs, can read Scientific papers and learn about different, like, you know, a gene that may when you delete it makes an organism not pathogenetic anymore and figure out a way to manipulate that in a drug.

Anya: Scientific papers are formatted differently than many of the papers recent high school graduates and humanities majors like myself will be accustomed to seeing.

Ana: Writing scientific papers, it’s hard. You know, it’s a lot different from writing an English paper. You know, you have your intro, you have your three body… You know, if you’re talking about like, a five paragraph paper, you have your intro, your three body…

Anya: Instead of following that intro, body, conclusion style that we here at RedPenned love so much, Ana’s paper begins with a section titled Objective. The objective section of the paper is one to three sentences and is designed to very simply state the purpose of the research project before moving on to the abstract.

Ana: I was told in one of my classes, in which we had to read scientific papers, they said, okay, first you read the abstract, and the abstract actually is very important. Usually it’s less than 200 words, and you’re summarizing the whole entire paper. You’re summarizing what organism you’re working with, why it’s important. You’re summarizing what you did. You’re summarizing, you know, your results. Then you’re talking about why those results are important and what those results mean. So a lot of people, they read the abstract, and if they’re interested, if it’s something they think is related to their field or something they need to know more about, they will read the rest of the paper. So that’s kind of what the abstract is for. It’s whether or not this paper is pertinent to what you’re doing.

Anya: The abstract also includes Ana’s hypothesis.

Ana: You got to start with a hypothesis, so like what you think is going to happen. So, for example, in this paper, I was like, okay, when I delete this gene, this specific gene, I don’t think it will affect the pathogenicity of Cryptococcus neoformans. That was my hypothesis. I learned later in the paper that I was wrong. But that’s how you start. That’s how you write the paper. You start with a hypothesis, and then you kind of build a, my PI likes to call it like a story around it. Like, what, why is this important? Why do people care about your study?

Anya: After the single paragraph abstract comes the introduction, which is about a page and a half long.

Ana: Now, the introduction is basically giving background information about the organism that you’re doing a study on, or whatever you’re doing a study on. In this case, it was a specific organism that I was doing a study on, and I had to talk about what the organism was and then why we should care about it, why we should study it. So, for example, it kills… It’s responsible for, like, ten to 15% of AIDS deaths, AIDS related deaths each year. (Anya: Wow..) That’s why we should care about it. So that’s really the introduction of setting up why it’s important, what this organism is, and then basically what is known about it currently and what gaps there are in that knowledge and what gaps I’m going to try to fill in this paper.

Anya: After the intro comes the procedures section, also known as the methods.

Ana: Yeah, the methods. My methods is writing out what I did. So basically, okay, so I got these worms, and then I took a cotton swab, dipped it in ethyl-ethanol, and then I, you know, I rubbed this certain spot in the worm I was going to inject it with. The method section is I don’t know if it’s the most important, but it’s definitely up there, because if people can’t replicate what you did, then, you know, that’s (Anya: There’s no point…) there’s no point. Yeah, that’s the whole point. (Anya: In doing the experiment…) The whole point of science is being able to do the experiment, get these results, and then if it’s replicable, that’s very important.

Anya: The paper then moves on to the Experiments and Results section, which includes graphs, tables and photos of the worms from Ana’s experiment.

Ana: I wrote the introduction first, but technically I gathered all of my results first. So that’s where all my figures were. Technically, that is done first because before I start writing the paper, I have to collect data to put in the paper, because the whole paper is revolving around the results section, basically. So the results, this is, you do not… you just say what the results are. You do not really, I guess, interpret them as much. You just talk about, okay, so I had, I injected this strain into 30 worms. Over the course of ten days, only three worms survived. That’s what I say. I say, oh, so here’s three worms survived. And I may talk about the statistics behind it. So I have like a table of P values, so I’m sure you know, so if a P value is less than zero five, it’s statistically significant.

Anya: For the uninitiated, a P value is a way to determine statistical significance among different sets of data. That’s what populates most of the tables in Ana’s Experiments and Results section. Ana then moves on to her conclusions.

Ana: This is when I talk about why I think things happened, like why I think some differences were statistically significant and some weren’t. Talk about any limitations that I had in the paper. So, for example, in this paper, a limitation I had was I had some, I believe it was bacterial contamination in some of my worms, so they died, and it wasn’t, I can’t determine that it was because of the Cryptococcus neoformans, because there was also bacteria there. I had to throw out those results. So I’m like, I am making interpretations based off the data I have, but the data is not complete because I’m missing some, because I had some contamination. So I couldn’t collect as much data as I wanted to because you’re supposed to have, like, replicates, for each like, experiment. I was making, I was making conclusions based off the data that I had. So I talked about that was like, hey, I’m talking about what I can talk about, which is not complete.

Anya: Ana’s paper is very clear to recognize that her conclusions are not fully complete. It reads, “since not all replicates were able to be finished as of the writing of this paper, results and conclusions being drawn here are based on incomplete data. Therefore, there will be limitations on the conclusions drawn, because there is not a full set of data to analyze. Conclusions made here could potentially be discounted once all the data is collected. Nevertheless, conclusions will be drawn based on the data given.” Being clear like this is very important when writing scientific papers, since your reader is coming to your paper looking for concise and accurate results. Since Ana didn’t have all of her data given. She couldn’t make her results fully accurate and needed to be upfront and honest with her audience about this. The next section of the paper is titled Future Directions.

Ana: So now I have this data, I’ve made the inferences, where do I go from here? What do I want to do now? So it’s basically any future experiments that I think would be related to what I did in this paper and would be helpful for, like, making the picture clearer. What data I collected and what that data means, what other scientists could do, what other questions there are. Because basically, I mean science, it’s all about asking questions. I think that’s one of the great things about science is I can ask the question and also answer it. It opens up the door for even more questions. Why are there these differences? What do these differences mean for drug treatment, for example? What do these differences mean for, like, its ability to infect people or infect other organisms, its ability to like disperse in the environment? Ultimately, you know, eventually you’d want like a vaccine to, you know, hopefully eradicate it so that we don’t have to worry about it anymore like we did with like smallpox and polio.

Anya: The last section of Ana’s paper is titled References and includes ten other scientific papers that she read while working on this research project.

Ana: Obviously, references that just built as I went along.

Anya: Each one of these references was cited directly somewhere in Ana’s paper, providing additional context on the microbe that she was studying. Stay tuned after the break to hear about why scientific papers are formatted this way, and to hear Ana’s personal advice to anyone writing their first ever scientific paper.

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Anya: In addition to the differences in sections and formatting, scientific papers also differ in their use of tense and voice. In contrast to the papers we typically see written for humanities classes, scientific papers move between the present and past tense, and the active and passive voice. The introduction and discussion sections of Ana’s paper are written in the present tense active voice, highlighting the fact that they are ongoing discussions that are currently happening. However, the methods section makes use of the past tense and passive voice.

Ana: Well the Methods section is actually, usually in passive voice, which I know is not popular in (laughs) the english department. I’m not saying I injected the worm, I’m saying the worm was injected, cause I’m explaining to people what I did so that if they want to repeat my experiment they have a step by step guide for what to do. That is essentially what the methods.. Cause that’s also like you know how the peer reviewing process kind of works is sometimes people will or sometimes, they will probably usually repeat your experiments to see if they get similar results. 

Anya: Scientific papers also make use of the first person in the introductory sections for similar reasons. The scientist uses phrases like, “I hypothesized,” or “I used,” to make it clear that this was their version of the experiment and what they did. These other scientists are one example of who could be reading a scientific paper, but here’s what Ana had to say about who else should be reading them.

Ana: When you write a scientific paper, it’s meant to be for a general audience so someone just an everyday person is meant to read it, and then when you open up the paper the title is crazy and then you keep reading and there’s all these terms that you don’t understand and even, you know, even people in science like there’s a lot of stuff sometimes when you’re reading a paper especially when its completely unrelated to your field a lot of it will just go over your head. I know a lot of papers even related to microbiology, half the stuff in the paper goes over my head a lot of the time. So it’s a lot, which I think is something that’s difficult about science communication is that there’s just a lot of terms when really when you break them down you’re like “oh well that just a name for a chemical” like that’s not… you know, you don’t need to necessarily know the name for a chemical you just need to know what it does. But the problem is the approachability of it all. It’s very unapproachable if you’re not in a field or if you’re not even in science you’re just someone who’s completely unrelated to science you’re coming in you’re like, “oh let me read this paper, just for fun,” (Anya: yeah) It won’t be fun! 

Anya: You can’t really, you can’t really skim a scientific paper.

Ana: No, you really can’t. It’s yeah it’s, science communication is very important. I’m glad that it’s a growing field because it’s definitely something that needs to be bigger than it currently is because it needs to be more approachable. I mean I think astronomy has probably done the best job because like, you know, like that TV show Cosmos. Like that, I feel like that opened up like a whole new, like, world for like scientific communication because people were like learning about all these complex things but it was talked about in such an approachable way that you felt like oh, like, I can do this, like, you know I can learn about this. I can understand this. Being able to communicate science is probably the most important thing about science because if you can’t effectively communicate it, it’s like what’s the point in you doing it like you have all this data, that great, but why is it important? How are you going to show this data to others and show them what it means? So I think there’s certain aspects, like the really, really big things in science are communicated effectively, but the smaller things that are also just as important are not communicated as well to the general populace. 

Anya: Since scientific papers are so difficult to parse, like Ana said, science communications is a field that is growing every day. Writing scientific papers is not the only kind of writing that scientists do, as science communicators like Carl Sagan, Hank Green, Neil Degrasse Tyson, or Eugenia Cheng prove. This ability to get the public interested in science means that there will be more public support for science as a whole, and more funding allotted to studies like Ana’s. 

Ana: Communications is very important, especially in science. Us scientists, you know, sometimes we have trouble with words. You know, I know I do. I’m like man, writing, kinda, I’m like, “uhh I don’t want do do this, like I don’t want to write,” and then I write it and I’m like, “well that’s, garbage, like no one’s gonna understand what I’m trying to say.” (laughs) So, it’s, it’s difficult. Especially sometimes you’re having to boil down a very complex idea, especially writing grants. Very important, about ten percent of all research is funded. Which is not a lot. So the most, one of the most important things, for you to do if you are going to be a researcher and have your own lab is to learn how to write grants and basically sometimes the people who are reading this grant are not scientists, and you have to effectively communicate why the research you are doing is important. I have not written a grant myself that is more like graduate level because that’s getting funding for your research. A lot of PIs write grants a lot, but basically you talk about what you’re planning on doing with the money that they’re gonna give you, because they’re gonna give you a lot of money if you get this grant and they want to make sure you’re actually doing something that’s going to produce results and results that are going to help the broader scientific community in general. So you basically you talk again, you know, you kinda talk about your organism as far as, you know, what it is, why it’s important that we study it, and what the course of action is for studying it. And, hopefully whoever is reading the grant thinks that your work is just as important as you think it is because you know at the end of the day all research is important, it’s just you know money, obviously is an issue because it costs a lot of money to do research. I was talking to one of the graduate students in my lab and I think she said one of the mice experiments they were doing was like fifty thousand dollars. So it’s a lot of money, but again it’s important especially if you’re studying an organism that causes disease to know what it is doing in animals. Money is very hard to come by in science and (laughs) it’s, it’s a big roadblock in doing research. If you can write very well you can write a wonderful grant and then somebody will give you money to do your research. Writing is important. 

Anya: For one of my last questions, I asked Ana what advice she would give someone who was writing their first ever scientific paper.

Ana: You know, I’m still kinda learning as I go too, but I would say, get as many people who are also scientists and who have also written these papers to look over it. Because if they’ve written, they’ve written papers if they’re published, you know, they’ve written papers they know how it works, they know what journals are looking for in these papers. So, just ask for help, thats good, cause like when you’re starting out like I, you know, I had no idea how to really go about this so I had to ask for help I was like, “where should I start,” like, “what is this going to look like at the end.” Like look just read papers too like see what other people have done that have been published and just figure out what they did figure out what worked. Yeah, and practice makes perfect, you know the more you write, the better you’re gonna be at it.

Anya: That’s something that anyone can learn from Ana’s experience with this research paper. Regardless of if you’re someone who will be writing scientific papers in your future, practicing, and asking for help when you need it, are things that will make you a much better writer. I think my main takeaway from my chat with Ana is that, though on the surface it may seem very different from the writing I do in my everyday, scientific writing is actually just the same as any writing, breaking up a complex idea into something that is digestible to a certain audience. Something that Ana said that really stuck with me was this.

Ana: I kinda see it as you have the pieces for like hundreds of different puzzles and you’re trying to build one puzzle. (laughs) So, it’s kinda hard to sift through all of it but it’s very exciting.

Anya: Sifting through those puzzle pieces is not just the process in scientific writing, but writing as a whole. We writers, no matter our discipline, have the work of hundreds of writers that came before us to sift through while we build our puzzles. But in the end, from that chaos we can create something beautiful. 

Anya: Hear that you better know how to write! (Both laugh) Ana thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me.

Ana: Yeah thank you for having me.

Anya: This podcast is sponsored by the Franklin College Writing Intensive Program, which gives faculty the opportunity to offer writing-intensive courses in all disciplines, including over 20 departments: from art history and women’s studies to genetics and anthropology. This podcast reexamines the way writing is taught and learned through all majors and programs of study—across the curriculum here at UGA. You can find episodes of Red Penned on Apple Music, Spotify and the Writing Intensive Program’s Website. Have a great day.