During our panel review, my group and I reflected on how harshly it felt we were judging others’ papers. We were picking apart every little thing, from their use of sources to their sampling method. As we were noticing this, my group and I realized that our papers were almost certainly experiencing the same thorough analysis. When we would comment on how someone’s sampling method seemed difficult to replicate in our lab, I thought about how mine was probably difficult to follow. When I noticed how someone’s introduction paragraphs didn’t transition well from one to the next, I thought whether mine were the same, and I just didn’t realize it because I had read it over so many times.
Going through the review process has made me realize that going forward, I need to get more opinions. I need to have multiple drafts, and I need to review them thoroughly each time. I think that if I have learned anything, it is that scientific writing is difficult for a variety of reasons, one of them being that your language and level of description must change depending on your audience. This is extremely relevant when it comes to experimental design. You want someone to be able to understand your procedure, but you don’t want it to be so simple that it is missing important things.
