Essays

In my writing style class, we were tasked to write a final paper after learning about many stylistic principles and issues in different fields. I chose to focus on the stylistic issues that scientific fields often struggle with. When I started in college, I had to learn how to read research papers and it took time. This class made me question whether research papers should be that complicated or if the scientific world should move to make their research more accessible to the general public.

In this issue paper, I use as an example the paper Endocannabinoid-mediated rescue of striatal LTD and motor deficits in Parkinson’s disease models, by Kreitzer and Malenka. Though I criticize the writing in this paper, I’d like to clarify that this is from a stylistic perspective. Scientific writing is traditionally done in the way that Kreitzer and Malenka do, and my criticism is directed at the tradition rather than at any individual.