Researching without writing is like chewing without swallowing (or swallowing without chewing)

by SV

As scientists, we love to get caught up in our work. We spend countless hours in our own heads, sporadically jotting down notes on the back of an envelope or a nearby white board only to throw the envelope away or erase the board the next day. The most common justification for this sort of behavior is that ”science takes time” and ”research should never be publication focused.”

The truth of the matter is: We are lazy. It is very easy to justify a day spent doing nothing if we can blame it on this one problem we have been stuck on for months. Rather than focus our thoughts and put them on paper, we prefer to leave them as evasive thoughts in our head. Every paper I have ever written began a couple of weeks before the deadline. There was always some problem that I had been struggling with for months, but given that the due date was mere days away, I had no choice but to start writing, in the hopes that the issue would resolve itself through some sort of miracle.

And it always did. Only it wasn’t a miracle. After a couple of these kinds of occurrences, I realized that my ability to perfectly align solutions with deadlines had nothing to do with luck, faith, or countless hours spent in the middle of the night. It was the very motion of writing. See, by typing out my thoughts, pouring my heart and frustration onto a piece of paper, I suddenly had a new perspective.

So my advice to every one who is struggling with that one detail in their proof is: Write it out. Not on the back on envelope. Not on the white board. Type it up like you’re about to submit it to your dream journal. Get the template. Make nice figures. You will soon feel like a reviewer rather than an author. And that perspective might just be all it takes.

Close Reading Gabor

If you bought the EE 295 Sketchbook, then you can (if you choose) review topics such as the types of sentences (simple, compound, complex, and compound complex), the ways good paragraphs are put together (with thesis or topic sentences, moving from simpler sentences to more complex ones and then back, and with coherence), and even the ways that sentences can be written to connect to one another helpfully within paragraphs (“connectivity”). Reading for the authors’ rhetorical choices is a new way of seeing, but I think it’s one of the most useful skills to improve your writing over your whole career.

One other thing to take into account, since we’ll be looking at introductory paragraphs, is that the beginning of a journal article tends to establish common ground, state a problem, and explain the writer’s response.

With all that in mind, let’s look at some examples from journal articles in the field.

Gabor’s classic article, “The Theory of Communication” (1946), starts like this:

Screen Shot 2015-10-11 at 4.11.43 PM

Notice, of course, how the very first paragraph is straightforward: “the purpose of this study” and the organization of the article are immediately specified. The first sentence is long, but it is just a simple sentence: the purpose is to present a method. All the rest are added phrases. The second sentence is complex, but it’s not a difficult one to figure out. There’s a dependent clause (starting with “while”) and then the main, independent clause.

The second paragraph then moves to one of the main goals of any introduction: establishing common ground. But what else does Gabor achieve here? The paragraph reads as as a short, short review article. This works to establish the writer’s authority. And it’s orderly; it’s a chronological story of how one idea develops off of another. After the first sentence or two, every other one begins with a time period. Usually the main subject is the researcher. Then there are specific and varied verbs: “disproved,” “discovered,” generalized.”

And let me emphasize that it’s a story, a narrative, which is an easy way for readers to process information. The engineers become characters in this story, which make the story easier to understand than if the subjects of the sentences were the inanimate “principles,” “claims,” and “convictions.”

Notice that the first two sentences do start with these inanimate subjects, and this is probably to establish the subject of the whole paragraph: principles of transmission. Notice, too, that the paragraph ends with these words, too; the final sentence contains both “transmitted” and “transmission.” It’s hard to get too far off track when reading this paragraph.

I’ll look at other paragraphs from other articles in future posts.

Mixed Messages on Plagiarism

By Dr. Sarah Gibson

I don’t want to be a downer…but the thing that has been on my mind lately regarding academic writing is plagiarism. I found a paper back in 2012 that plagiarized one of my papers. I guess it was not particularly egregious–they didn’t steal my data and try to pass it off as their own, but they did paraphrase (very poorly, like replacing a few words with synonyms while keeping the sentence structure) several sentences and paragraphs of mine without citing me. In doing so they essentially stole my ideas. I followed the IEEE guidelines for reporting plagiarism, but to my disappointment the editor of the journal that published the offending paper “disagreed” with me that this case constituted plagiarism, and went so far as to say that, if anything, I should be happy that the authors agreed with my arguments! I thought, am I taking crazy pills? So I showed it to the director of the UCLA Graduate Writing Center who also showed it to the director of UCLA Writing Programs,  both of whom agreed that this was textbook plagiarism. At the time, I was wrapping up my PhD, getting ready for my defense, and looking for a job, so I didn’t have time to pursue it further. But it has always been in the back of my mind, so last November I decided to bring up the issue again with the new editor of the same journal. He sent the case to the journal’s Plagiarism Committee, but they refused to hear my case because they said that my complaint had not changed and had already been addressed by the previous editor.

Needless to say, I’m furious. All my life (well, since middle school, probably), all my teachers have put the Fear of God in me about plagiarism, warning me that it is a crime so serious that it could get me kicked out of school, ruin my career, or worse. As such, I’ve taken great pains in my own writing to give proper credit where credit is due, and to be very careful when paraphrasing (even when I am giving proper credit!). So when I am wronged, at the very least I would expect IEEE to have my back. It is so unbelievable to me that they won’t stand up for me–won’t defend the very idea of intellectual property (wrong term?) at all.

One thing that both Directors did point out was how every country/culture (I know you hate slashes! but I used one anyway!) has a different idea about what constitutes plagiarism vs. “common knowledge”, and that this makes the issue much more complicated, since the papers are being written by authors from all across the world, and even the journal editors and IEEE committee members are from all different cultures.

The main purpose of this post is to express my shock and disappointment at this event. But if you have any suggestions for how to proceed, I would love to hear them. I do have a couple more ideas: (1) contact the editor of the plagiarized journal (rather than the plagiarizing journal). This is not IEEE protocol, but maybe they would have my back? (2) Find an IEEE fellow to write a letter on my behalf. (3) Go to the press with a scathing expose.

 

 

Your writing process

What is your writing process?

When and where do you like to write, and why?

What sort of on-going writing to do you, as you think and do research?

How do you know that it’s time to start writing a more formal article (a conference paper or journal article)?

How do you prepare to write?

What do you work on first?

As you’ve gotten more experience, what are the most important things you’ve learned about writing or your particular writing process?

Cross-disciplinary thinking, and a crazy suggestion

The EE department set up a class called “technical writing,” but discussions with some EE faculty suggest that another main goal is related to your getting a more  liberal education. The assumption seems to be that inputs from other fields can inspire and fertilize the minds of engineers. The class changes from quarter to quarter, but this goal explains why I assign a nonfiction public science book during some quarters; it explains two quarters that included Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man; it explains our improvisational games, too.

One of my experiences this summer has only increased my interest in and valuation of cross-disciplinary thinking. I worked at a summer camp for a week, a summer camp that draws in children and teens who love certain books about alternative worlds and then builds on their interests in reading, fantasy, science fiction, technology, role-playing, writing, and art and encourages them to combine all those interests, along with “design thinking,” to imagine the future. When I was there, I happened to be reading Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Seveneves, in which he spends most of the book describing a surprising future—and particularly all the technology that lets humankind survive the destruction of the earth.

This type of imagining, whether in the service of entrepreneurial opportunity or science fiction, seems worth devoting some of your attention to. Whether or not you espouse the singularity—I don’t, quite, but the Camp Director thinks it’s arriving in the next 15-35 years, which I hope will be within all our lifetimes—technological change is happening faster and faster. And with that, in spite of the ways cultures and traditions try to pump the brakes on drastic behavioral change, contemporary societies are changing surprisingly quickly, too. How to prepare?

Well, there may be no specific way to prepare for unknown changes, but all you creative electrical engineers can probably succeed in this situation. At camp, I asked my writing students to imagine a future, and one told the story of a boy using his iPhone as a hovercraft and matter generator (not just a 3D printer!). I assume this is impossible, but I am also sure it’s limited thinking. Why just try to improve an iPhone? Why not imagine a society beyond that, where iPhones seem as obsolete as my flip phone does now? What will replace them? What do people—you!—fantasize about being able to do now, but you can’t? And what will enable that?

Since we were sitting on a beautiful beach while writing, two students wrote short poems about the sea, the birds, the rocks, and the boats. And then they moved from there, imagining a future in which readers would not be able to interpret their poems, since humans no longer had access to this natural setting. That got them going, and the next step (if they’d had more time) would have been to imagine ways to prevent this from happening. Are there technological means to enable more rather than less human interaction with the complexity and beauty of nature? How can technology reduce mediation, or environmental degradation, rather than increase it?

In short, start jotting down some fantasy fiction, and see where it takes you as an engineer.

Some further reading:

The books and “fandoms” these kids love: Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, Doctor Who and Sherlock (from BBC television), Scott Westerfield’s Leviathan trilogy, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra (related tv series), and others (including, of course, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books). You might enjoy reading some of these yourself!

One article on Neal Stephenson’s contributions to scientific vocabulary and research is Gray Scott’s “Interdisciplinary Sage” in Tomorrow Through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006):

“The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson

This is feminist science fiction, among many other things, and I highly recommend it. Before the iPad, Neal Stephenson imagined the interactive book-like thing he calls A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. Apple sells the “Raise an Excellent Child Bundle” of apps , and so perhaps Stephenson’s not far off the mark. But instead of giving dietary advice to parents and suggesting mathematical video games for small children, Stephenson’s nanny-book is both artificially intelligent (adapting to the temperaments and experiences of its reader) and taps into real-time human actors’ voices and judgments. Made for one spoiled grand-daughter of a successful entrepreneur, and purloined for one rash daughter of a creative engineer, the books end up raising an abused and low-income girl and another million orphan girls—who together try to save the world from artificial intelligence that does not require human interface and being led by conscious human desire. At least I think that’s what happens! I’m reading it again soon, because it’s so interesting and also complex.

You’ve arrived! To work!

Some of you have signed up, and now the fun (work?) can begin!

I’d love to have you write a short post that (re)introduces yourself to (me/) us.

Did you end up publishing the article you wrote in EE 295? What was the process like after your final version in that class? What have you worked on since then? What wisdom have you gleaned from your experiences? What has been you experience collaborating with others (outside of EE, in your lab, or with reviewers and journal editors). Choose one topic or touch on all them, and others.

You can write your post as if you are just writing me a personal email OR as you want it posted. (Let me know which it is!) I’d like to hear how you are doing, and knowing more about your experiences will help me fashion this site to your interests. It will also let me know what kinds of expertise we have here, in this virtual collaborative space. Your post can remain forever in the draft stage (that is, unpublished), as we communicate back and forth on it, or it (or some of it) can eventually become a short article on the site (only if you are for that, of course!)

In short, you can remain as private as you want. You can just communicate with me via drafts. You can communicate to our small group of UCLA EE PhD candidates and graduates with posts that have password protection. Or you can choose to communicate to the whole world (who is not really looking, to tell you the truth) via public posts. Since all your writing has to go through me to get posted, I’ll need to be told what how you want it treated when I read it.

Eager to hear from you,

Dana

An initial dedicated registration period

I’m sending out queries to my past EE students, asking if they want to join the site.

If you register, then I can send you a password, and you can start writing “posts.” These do not need to be short essays, as mine tend to be. They can be questions, topics for discussion, and other requests or ideas. I will review them, and then put them up. They do not go up immediately,  so if you want to send me a message in the post about how you want to be identified (or not) on the website, or any other message, that will work. You can also say if you want the post public (anyone can read it) or more private (I think this means for contributors only).

If you are someone other than a past student of mine, you can start the registration process, and then (at that time) I will communicate with you about your interest in the site. The site is mainly intended for past students who might want some private collaboration, but at the mome

“A Scientific Approach to Writing for Engineers and Scientists” by Robert E. Berger (IEEE Press, 2014)

I both love and hate the detail in this book. This approach to teaching writing seems like a great idea, and the book is full of useful information, but 191 pages of examples, boxed definitions, and bullet points is too much (for me) to bear.

Berger categorizes sentences into types and then writes a formula for each one. These get more and more complicated. They include, for example, many small bracketed question marks, which stand for the fact that in some sentences of the form in question, punctuation is necessary at this point, and in some, it’s not. I could list other examples of his layers of code that seem to obscure his message, but let me instead refer to a few things I liked.

1. His term “premise.” Berger uses “premise” to mean “a coherent series of paragraphs intended to support a particular proposition (e.g. whether a particular problem is worth solving, whether a particular technical approach will lead to solving a problem, and whether a market exists for a product)” (6). I’ve always called this a “step,” but “premise” captures the meaning better.

2. His basic distinction between the “core” of a sentence and its various “qualifiers,” which add important information ( what kind of x?  when x happens, why x happens). If you identify the main point of your sentences, you’ll know what to say in the core of it, and then you’ll know what to put in the auxiliary parts. And then your reader would better understand your hierarchy of ideas.

3. Where and how the qualifier is attached to the sentence is important. Berger writes in bold: “The integration of qualifiers into sentences is the most common writing challenge encountered by scientists and engineers” (18). One would generally put the additional information close to the word it describes. Berger offers a lot more information on this decision, but it’s couched in grammar jargon (some of it will be familiar to you, and some of it he invented himself).

4. His ideal of having no more than two qualifiers in a sentence is a good one, even if that’s not always possible (4). Engineers try to cram too much information in a single sentence!

5. His high value on parallelism (what he calls “principle of equivalence”), which means ” all items in a list should be treated the same way” (4).

6. His emphasis on coherence. A paragraph should have one goal, and a topic or thesis sentence helps your reader understand this goal.

7. His attention to flow. Sentences should flow together, paragraphs should be arranged logically. Regarding sentences flowing together, Berger does not just emphasize transition words but also what he calls “linking words,” which are repeated words that appear in neighboring sentences and highlight the relationship between them (153).

If any of these topics are important to you, but you feel that they have not been properly explained to you in the past, then try this book. The Table of Contents is quite detailed, so you should be able to locate the topics of greatest interest to you. Perhaps the author’s scientific approach will be more attractive to you than it was to me.

 

Forums

Forums fail me.  I’m bothered by the messy trees of influence, or the linear scroll through ideas that are not linearly connected.

But I  want this to be a site that lets us interact.  Describing real experiences can both let the describer process and learn from them and also help others prepare for those experiences. Just as important is the fact that this site can become the very thing that you require, as you clarify what you need from it, as you contribute to it, demand from it, and challenge it.

So, at least for now, forum comments will look like posts, and they will be tagged with “Forum.” As we get more topics,  they will be named something more specific than that.   Other management options are, of course, always on the table. That is,  they are not impossible; we can continue to discuss them and make changes.

If you  want to pose a topic for discussion, please create a post and begin the conversation. (You will need to register and have me send you a password before you can do this.)

Where should you publish? Here!

Let the discussion begin!

css.php