Understanding science evidence
In my last blog, I encouraged you to strike out the word ‘enhance’ from your documents. I knew I was on firm ground because Don Watson and others have already targeted this word for expulsion from the language. However, I am now going to make a suggestion that may seem altogether more contentious; that is, when writing about science we should reduce the use of the word ‘evidence’.
Why do I think this? Because most public readers of science information do not know enough about science methods to know what constitutes ‘evidence’, let alone whether it is good, bad or indifferent. Hence a statement such as ‘there is good evidence that eating leafy green vegetables reduces bowel cancer’ might mean: (a) that there have been lots of studies of variable quality that overall, show some benefit of consuming copious amounts of leafy greens; or (b) there has been one good-quality study that shows a large effect of doing as your mother told you and ‘eating your greens’. If you were reading a newspaper article on this topic, how would you know the difference? And does it matter?
I think that it does matter a great deal, and the onus is on scientists, science writers and editors to make sure that the community understands information about science evidence. Thus, in the above example, instead of talking about ‘good evidence’, we could describe the research we are talking about, for example: ‘there have been many studies of the health effects of eating leafy green vegetables and the results have shown a small but consistent reduction in the risk of developing colon cancer.’ Depending on the audience, you could add further details about the types of studies, statistical significance of the effect and so on, but the point is that replacing the word ‘evidence’ with some information about the research itself puts the reader in a much better position to understand what is going on.
There is much more to say on this topic – which I have called ‘The Language of Evidence’ – but I will save that for another day …
Janet Salisbury
Category: Science editing
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2 Comments to Understanding science evidence
by Tristan Viscarra Rossel
On August 9, 2010 at 1:22 pm
As you suggest, providing further information about the evidence in question helps the reader to understand the evidence a little more, and lends credibility to the material being read. It’s not really a contentious thought. The downside to science writing and editing for the general public is that providing such a level of detail is often a luxury. I am frequently preparing ‘science’ articles with a 550-600 word limit!
by Janet
On August 10, 2010 at 9:18 am
Thanks Tristan. I agree that short articles are the most challenging. But they are also where we need to take the most care because they are often the ones that are read by the general public. So ‘there has been no research’ is only one word more than ‘there is no evidence’ and has so much more meaning!
‘There have been some small studies that show inconsistent effects’ and ‘there have been many large studies that show a small effect’ are both much more wordy than ‘there is little evidence’ but by using one or the other you are elightening the reader in a way that ‘little evidence’ never would.
Take up the challenge – strike out the word ‘evidence’!