Erin Hill

Aileen Wood
Cecily Greene
Janae Thompson
ENGL297

Putting Actions into Words: An Ethnography of A Scientific Writer

Introduction
Writing is a pivotal aspect of scientific communication; however, scientists have a
reputation for being inadequate writers. It could be that aspiring scientists are taught to
focus more on science than on writing. Good verbal and written communication in the
field of science allows scientist to collaborate effectively which leads to better scientific
results. Scientific writing in its rudimentary form is a translation of results set forth by
one curious person in search to find answers to questions many of us find mystifying. It
reveals the methodology, the drawbacks, and the results of the research conducted in a
clear and succinct manner. Most importantly, it is the means for a scientist to get his or
her work out to the world to explain the origin of the subject, its potential future, and
why we all should care.
This ethnographic report aims to focus on what aspiring researchers/scientists
need to know about scientific writing through the perspective of an academic principal
investigator (scientific researcher) in the field of Psychology. In our report, we will
emphasize six major heuristics that aspiring scientific writers should consider in their
work context stated in chapter 15 of Solving Problems In Technical Communication: (1)
amount and quality of writing entailed and expected, (2) nature of writing, (3) genres
and rhetorical strategies, (4) approaches to and processes for writing, and (5) knowledge
and skills (Johnson-Eilola & Selber). These heuristics would be applied through an
analysis of published papers, scientific protocols, two in office interviews, and
observations of the workplace. By using these methods and documents, we hope to
enlighten and prepare new or aspiring scientific writers who will delve in and embrace
the scientific writing process.

Research Subject and Location

As a group of young women with a common interest in science-based writing, we
thought it would be beneficial to interview a female principal investigator, Dr. GA. Dr.
GA is an assistant professor of Psychology as well as the Neuroscience and Cognitive
science graduate program here at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her
neuroendocrinology lab explores structural plasticity in the adult and aging brain, its
alterations by experiences and hormones with a view towards understanding their
functional relevance. Her research is directed to interactions among rewarding
experiences, parenting, mating, hippocampal plasticity, and hippocampal function.
(GA, 2017). The hippocampus is an area of the brain that deals with memory. Therefore,
her findings contribute to research dealing with dementia, aging, and epilepsy.
Dr. GA has produced twenty-seven publications over the span of fourteen years.
Alongside these publications, she has written grants to support her research, guided
dissertations, and constructed protocols. Because of this wide breadth of experience, we
knew she would be able to highlight the pivotal aspects of scientific writing and how to
prepare and produce scientific documents. She shared this knowledge with us through
two in-office interviews located in her office in the Biology-Psychology Building at the
University of Maryland.

Data Collection Methods

Our data collection methods included the two in-person interviews, workplace
observations, and the analysis of one of Dr. GAs published reports.
The most crucial part of our data collection was centered around the in-person
interviews we had with Dr. GA. Because Dr. GA is an assistant professor and the head of
a Behavioral Neuroendocrinology lab, we knew that her time was very valuable and we
would have to start planning to decide when we were going to meet.
The planning of when and where our meeting would take place began in mid-
March to ensure that we would have enough time to coordinate. We created a Doodle
poll between her and the four members of our group to determine the best time to meet.
Based on the times that each of us were available, we divided ourselves into two pairs. If
we all met with her individually, it likely would have taken up too much time and would
not have been as conducive to our research, so going in pairs was an optimal route. Two
of us split up to interview with Dr. GA on March 28th and the other two met with her on
March 31st. Both pairs planned to spend an hour in her office in the Biology-Psychology
building, each prepared with four to five different questions to ask. The questions were
emailed to her before the interviews which gave her time to prepare her responses. We
also asked if they were any questions that she felt we should ask her or if there were
additional information she would like to share. This served as a constructive critique of
our interview skills and to guarantee we provide as much important information as
possible to our ethnography.
Our questions for the interview focused on the nature of her writing, the amount
and quality of writing needed for her work, rhetorical devices used in scientific writing,
her approach and process of writing, and the skills needed. The answers from these
questions would fully inform aspiring scientists on what to prepare for in scientific
writing.
During the interview, we asked any additional questions that arose from the
responses that Dr. GA provided. The purpose was to clarify terms and fully fill out vague
answers. Thus, our interviews were semi-structured, a format which has been found to
yield more information than a very structured interview (Johnson-Eilola & Selber,
2013).
 The goal of our research was to learn about her writing approach and process in
her research fields. We knew that she conducted research through her Behavioral
Neuroendocrinology Lab in addition to gathering references for her publications, yet we
ended up learning so much more which is further discussed in our Findings section. To
ensure that we were attentive to all that she had to share, one person did most note
taking while the other made sure to engage interpersonally during the conversation.
This method allowed one interviewer to fully engage in conversation with Dr. GA by
asking questions, making eye contact while observing facial expressions and body
language. The second interviewer would be free to record answers and take notes. After
we finished asking the questions we had planned to ask and any others that came up, we
ended up learning more about her background and experiences as a writer. Research
and writing is something that she is clearly passionate about because of all the time and
effort she puts into it, although she wishes she could put even more time into working
on her publications.
In addition to the interviews we conducted with Dr. GA, we did workplace
observations. There was no conversation occurring at the time, so the two of us in each
pair took approximately five minutes to take observational notes of her office. It was a
quiet and organized functional workspace where she displayed several things including
pictures of her family and her awards, accomplishments, and recognitions.
Following the interviews and workplace observations, we could tell that Dr. GA is
very dedicated and proud of the work that she does. She has been doing this for many
year and she spoke with great pride. To further delve into her work, we decided to read
one of her recently published pieces, which will be discussed in further detail later in
this report.
Throughout the process, including the planning of the interviews and during the
interview, Dr. GA was very cooperative and willing to help our group. She was highly
responsive to the emails that were sent back and forth. During the interview, she
provided very detailed responses to our question that enticed a wonderful discussion.
In the end, time was a limitation in our data collection process. We gathered a
satisfactory amount of information from Dr. GA, but we could have gone a step further.
If we could have scheduled a time to visit Dr. GAs lab and even see her research
assistants and her in action, it would have been a great addition. However, we are
satisfied from all that we gathered from our interactions.

Findings
The first in-person interview went very smoothly and uninterrupted. We found
that creating a Q&A transcript of the first interview and sending it to the group before
the second interview allowed us to come up with additional questions or to expand upon
points that were already made. This method was beneficial in getting the most
information from two short interviews. The second interview, which occurred later in
the week, also went very well. It provided a great opportunity for new findings because
multiple interviews reduce bias that may result from an isolated individual. Dr. GA was
very thorough in her responses, so each pair left with a substantial amount of
information. For example, she recommended a book called, How to Write a Lot by Paul
Silvia which offers tactic to improve productivity in academic writing. She
recommended reading the Wall Street Journal because it is a great example of good
writing, and a podcast called, This American Life, which takes uninteresting topics and
present them in a compelling manner.

Background in Writing
Dr. GAs development in her writing stems from a combination of her
undergraduate and graduate career. She attended the small, liberal arts-focused
Randolph-Macon College that was writing and speaking intensive. This institution gave
her a tremendous foundation in writing as she pursued her education and even into her
current career. It was not until attending graduate school at The Ohio State University,
however, that she learned about scientific writing. She could combine what she learned
in both levels of education to form the expertise that she has today.

Study Protocol
The specialization of Dr. GAs research and writings is neuroendocrinology, so for
lab work she commonly uses non-human subjects. Writing a study protocol for animal
use is typically the first thing she must do before she can proceed. This study protocol is
sent to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) to be reviewed and
approved before she can proceed with research. In the animal protocol, she must explain
her research in less technical terms because the committee is made up of both scientists
and nonscientists. Therefore, she must write in such a way that any one of the
committee members would be able to fully understand her protocol. To do this, she
faces the challenge of pushing her scientific jargon to the side so that she can speak in
more plain language. She also must ensure that she defines and explains terms that a
non-scientific person would not know. This causes the writing in the protocol to be
much more explicitly worded than it would be in any report she would produce. As a
scientific writer, this goes against her training because she is accustomed to writing in a
clear and concise manner.

Research & Writing Process

Dr. GAs writing process truly reflects the extremely busy schedule that she and
most other researchers have. She never has time to just sit down and write a research
article, so instead she will allocate herself fifteen to twenty-five minute intervals to just
get out any ideas in her head. She emphasized that she doesnt try to be perfect in her
drafts because she can fix those imperfections later; instead her first goal is to just get
her thoughts down on paper. Once her first draft is all compiled (which usually takes
several months), her finished article is around twenty-five to thirty pages and is sent out
to be peer reviewed as many as four times. Dr. GAs method of writing proves to be
effective for her because she puts her ideas on paper in the most raw and original form,
however this way of writing only in bits and pieces when she has time can give the article
a disjointed and scattered voice, and really delay the time in which it takes to get
published

Reviewing
After completing the first draft, it can be as many as four to six months before Dr.
GA releases it. In the professional writing field that Dr. GA is in, there is often no
deadline other than her own internal deadline that she must meet. This can make the
process or writing, revising, and publishing very lengthy. When she does send it out to
be reviewed, it first goes to her peers, who are fellow principal investigators within
psychology and or biology departments. The peer review process begins by having two
peers who are familiar with her research review her work. Because there is a chance they
could be biased, the peers will usually bring in one or two more peer reviewers to go
over the article again. High ranking journals will have even more peer reviewers,
ranging from five to seven and possibly even more if necessary. This process benefits the
writing because it is critically reviewed by so many different peers, allowing various
perspectives to analyze and review it for flaws, and giving the writer ultimately near
perfected final draft.

Artifact Analysis
To finalize the findings of our interview, we read one of Dr. GAs more recent
published reports. This is crucial to our research because it grounds what we know
about Dr. GAs process in a final product. By reading the final article, we can see how
she executes her approach to scientific writing.
We chose the article, Adult neurogenesis: Optimizing hippocampal function to
suit the environment, which was published by Dr. GA and her colleagues in the journal
Behavioural Brain Research in 2011. This article is four pages long, which is on the
briefer side of empirical journal articles. Doctoral psychology thesis papers, which often
follow similar formats to journal articles, can be hundreds of pages long. This goes to
show the wide range of formats that publications in the field can use.
The structure differs a bit from the classic scientific report, which normally
follows the sequence of Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, and
Discussion. Other components, such as Participants or Limitations are often
common. The reason that this article deviates quite a bit from this format is that this
article proposes an understanding of neurogenesis that is based on the literature created
by Dr. GA and other researchers, instead of one isolated study. Dr. GA chose to divide
the report to follow the logical flow of her explanation, going from each aspect of the
proposed theories and examining the information we know about each. Her headings
are as follows: Abstract, Experience and adult neurogenesis, New neurons as
substrate for fine-tuning behavioral responses to the environment, and Dorsal versus
ventral hippocampus (GA, Schoenfeld, & Gould, 2011).
It is clear from reading the paper that Dr. GA has a very consistent approach to
field vocabulary. Audience is an important consideration in choosing what level of
vocabulary to use. Dr. GAs paper is specifically targeted to individuals familiar with the
basic jargon of neuroscience, so Dr. GA chooses not to define terms such as
neurogenesis, hippocampus, or neurons because she is assuming that the audience for
this article would already have at least a baseline knowledge of these terms, as they
would be considered integral concepts in her area of study.
That being said, Dr. GAs writing is not too haughty as to suggest intellectual
pretension. This article is meant to inform clearly and concisely. There is very little fluff
which is perhaps why the article can afford to be so brief. Even transitions serve to only
further the readers understanding of each concept.
One strategy that Dr. GA uses frequently in the article is to bring up a limitation
or a contradiction in the data or literature, and then make sense of it with theory, or by
explaining certain confounds in the research process that could account for the
confusion. For example, after discussing two nearly opposing theories to anxiety
reduction through experiences that increase neurogenesis, she acknowledges that it is
difficult to reconcile these two sets of findings (GA, Schoenfeld, & Gould, 2011). She
then goes on to explain the different neuron theory that can account for this paradox
in neuron activity.
We also analyzed the information design component of the paper, as it
incorporates an explanatory graphic. The paper is written in serif font, perhaps Georgia,
as is this paper, because both are formal reports. This small choice helps to legitimize
journal articles. Whether the journal or Dr. GA herself made this decision, it says a lot
about the culture of written pieces in psychology and neuroscience. Conversely, the
labels in Dr. GAs Figure 1 are in sans serif font. The goal of incorporating a graphic is to
visually illustrate the rhetoric outlined in the article. Sans serif font make the graphic
easier to discern. The graphic is also very well designed as it uses intuitive color coding
(green to indicate a High-Reward situation, red to indicate High-Threat) and an
appropriate left-to-right flow of images to represent a chronological sequence of
circumstantial cause and neurological effect.
Its important to note that this brief report has fifty-six separate references to
support the suggestions outlined. This seems baffling, but keeping Dr. GAs writing
process in mind, it makes sense. Dr. GA, as noted in the interview, is constantly keeping
herself aware of new articles being published in her field. To write an effective report,
she must use her own research to form hypotheses, and then incorporate other theories
to flesh out the possible causes and predictors of these hypotheses. Even if some
literature contradicts the research that she conducts, she must incorporate it into her
reports to be able to counter argue the research, or explore limitations in her own
research. Much of the time it takes to write a psychological paper is spent researching
and consolidating the findings, and the fact that Dr. GA could make sense of and
consolidate fifty-six sources into four pages just supports the idea that she is well-versed
in her field.
Inspecting this final report was instrumental in our investigation of Dr. GA as a
professional writer and as a researcher.

Discussion
Although we only interviewed one individual in the field of scientific professional
writing, from our two interviews with Dr. GA we still managed to gain quite a bit of
insight into the field. From the information we gathered through our research, we
learned about the detailed brainstorming and revision that goes into the research and
writing process of a scientific professional writer, the time management and reviewing
skills that are utilized in this field of writing, and the obstacles and difficulties of limited
time, money, and resources that can affect the writing process. These two short
interviews alone gave us so much information about our informant, Dr. GA, showing us
the importance that things like location or types of questions we ask serve. The next step
we could take in the research process to gain further insight into Dr. GAs processes
would be to shadow Dr. GA during a typical day of work, research, and writing.
Although it would be very difficult to schedule this, by following Dr. GA in a typical day,
we would have a firsthand look into how she balances her research and her writing and
it would give us an even greater understanding of the world of scientific professional
writing.
 Works Cited

Glasper, E. R., Schoenfeld, T. J., & Gould, E. (2011). Adult neurogenesis: Optimizing
hippocampal function to suit the environment. Behavioural Brain
Research,227(2), 380-383. doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2011.05.013

Glasper, E. (2017, March 28th & 31st). Personal interview.

Glasper, E. (2017, April 15). Erica Glasper, PSYC, Psychology Department, University of
Maryland. Retrieved from https://psyc.umd.edu/facultyprofile/Glasper/Erica

Johnson-Eilola, J., & Selber, S. A. (2013). Solving problems in technical

communication. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
 Group Member Contributions
for Professor Szczepaniec-Bialas knowledge, NOT part of Ethnography

Cecily Greene:
- Contributed to team charter, team schedule, proposal, letter-of-inquiry, and peer-
reviews
- Set-up interviews with Dr. Glasper
- Conducted an interview with Janae
- Typed notes from the first interview
- Wrote Introduction and Research Subject and Location sections of the ethnography
- Assisted with edits

Aileen Wood:
Contributed to team charter, team schedule, proposal, letter-of-inquiry, and peer-
reviews
Conducted an interview with Erin and kept field notes
Wrote Research and Writing Process, Reviewing, and Discussion section
Helped with overall edits of the paper

Janae Thompson:
- Contributed to team charter, team schedule, proposal, letter-of-inquiry, and peer-
reviews
- Interviewed Dr. Glasper with Cecily
- Wrote Study Protocol, Background in Writing and the Findings introduction sections
- Helped with overall edits and voice consistency throughout paper

Erin Hill:
- Contributed to team charter, team schedule, proposal, letter-of-inquiry, and peer-
reviews
- Interviewed Dr. Glasper with Aileen
- Supplied supplemental research questions during interview
- Located and cited Dr. Glaspers article (artifact)
- Analyzed Artifact, wrote Artifact Analysis Section
- Helped with overall edits and voice consistency throughout paper