Bernard Dixon

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How Not To Build Bridges

Microbiology offers many, often disregarded, opportunities for authors of journal papers to attract readers outside their own precise field. The first sentence and paragraph are crucial.

Bernard Dixon

What is the point of anyone writing, publishing or reading opening sentences such as:

"Travellers often develop diarrhoea during stays in tropical and subtropical destinations" (F. von Sonnenburg, N. Tornieporth, P. Waiyaki, B. Lowe, L-F. Peruski, H.L. DuPont, J.W. Mathewson, and R. Steffen, Lancet 356:133, 2000)

"Plant oils and extracts have been used for a wide variety of purposes for many thousands of years" (K. A. Hammer, C. F. Carson, and T. V. Riley, J. Appl. Microbiol. 86:985, 1999)

"The use of pesticides has become an integral part of modern agricultural systems" (W. Chen and A. Mulchandani, Trends Biotechnol. 16:71, 1998)?

The Nobel laureate Peter Medawar once suggested that authors should never launch a scientific paper with a resounding banality. He had in mind grandiose statements such as "Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease which is responsible for considerable annual burdens of both morbidity and mortality among people living in tropical regions of the world."

A moment's reflection tells us that this type of opener serves no purpose whatever. Not only malariologists, not only protozoologists, not only microbiologists, but virtually everyone knows that malaria is transmitted by mosquito bites, that it occurs in the tropics, and that it can make you ill and die. So why waste words? Similarly, why tell a 21st-century audience that farmers use pesticides, that humans have always used plant oils, and that travellers to the tropics get diarrhea?

We all tend to write such sentences, of course. They emerge from the cerebral cortex as soon as we settle down at the screen, clear the throat, and try to command our readers' attention. What we need to do, therefore, is to recognize the fatuity of such declamations and use the delete key. If we are seriously unaware of the problem, editors should do the surgery instead.

Resounding banalities are not merely purposeless. They positively impair the quality of scientific writing by replacing what could be far more enticing overtures. Consider the following, which are genuinely interesting:

"Fungi are an emerging cause of hospital-acquired infection" (M. Arvanitidou, K. Kanellou, T. C. Constantidines, and V. Katsouyannopoulos, Lett. Appl. Microbiol. 29:81, 1999)

"More than seven decades after its discovery, the bactericidal effects of penicillin remain mysterious" (K. W. Bayles, Trends Microbiol. 8:274, 2000)

"Salmonella typhimurium lives in environments where both nutrients and physical conditions can change rapidly" (K. Turner, J. Poster, R. Pickup, and C. Edwards, J. Appl. Microbiol. 89:90, 2000).

Each of these points will doubtless have been familiar to some readers--but by no means all. For many others, the sentences contain, respectively, an arresting fact, a major surprise and a thought-provoking idea.

That is the crucial point. Every research paper will appeal to a well-defined core of specialists. However, an attractive title, opening sentence, and first paragraph can, in addition, reach a much wider penumbra of readers. This will include browsers and people in adjacent disciplines. An author submitting a report to a dedicated journal of antibiosis, for example, does not need to highlight the significance of developments in understanding penicillin action. Some specialists will be obliged to read such a paper (even one that is tediously written) because the topic is so close to their own work.

The introduction to a similar paper appearing in Trends in Microbiology, on the other hand, could be designed to tweak the antennae of other potential readers. Many of them, preoccupied by adenoviruses or bioremediation, may wrongly believe that the action of penicillin on cell wall synthesis was sorted out decades ago. They need an opening which builds a bridge, explaining why both the subject and findings are important.

It is because much potentially rewarding reading is not obligatory but serendipitous that introductory sentences and paragraphs are so crucial. Here is Bryn Bridges, launching a commentary on adaptive mutation a few years back in Trends in Microbiology (3:291, 1995):

"Bacteria, like some actors, tend to spend most of their time `resting.' They often do not know where their next meal is coming from, and show no obvious sign of activity to the casual observer. But, just as `resting' actors may in fact be very busy, eking out their resources and trying new approaches, so ‘resting’ bacteria call into play a whole new set of metabolic activities that are distinct from those occurring during active growth."

Closer in tone to a popular magazine article than a scholarly paper, this makes a refreshing change from learned journals' standard fare. Although such an approach would not be appropriate or necessary for every communication, it was highly effective here.

Bridges knew that he did not need to arouse the curiosity of bacteriologists already acquainted with so-called directed mutations. He recognized, however, that Trends in Microbiology readers also include virologists, mycologists and others who might, with a little help, find the subject absorbing. So he thought carefully about comparative or metaphorical language to illuminate his subject for a wider audience.

The more heterogeneous that readership, the greater the opportunities to extend helping hands in this way. Here is Richard Cammack, opening a piece in Nature (390:443, 1997) on methyl-coenzyme M reductase:

"Whenever biomass is degraded, and oxygen runs out, methanogenic bacteria appear and make methane in profuse quantities. For us it is a potential fuel. For the microbes, it is the ultimate waste product. The structure of the enzyme that produces it…"

Here a thought-provoking contrast between "fuel" and "waste product" has replaced the pedestrian or highly technical introduction one might expect for such a topic. Both Nature and Science use devices of this sort very effectively in their news sections, to introduce concepts, theories and even techniques to a larger audience than would otherwise encounter them. Their approach could be adopted far more widely and with great benefit across the entire range of journals.

Microbiologists are, of course, no more blameworthy for resounding banalities and impenetrable writing generally than people in psychology or plate tectonics. On the other hand, there appears to be little recognition of the problem.

Why, within microbiology, are there no initiatives such as that of Chicago's Fermilab, whose particle physicists now have to produce "plain English" Web versions of their papers to attract scientists from other fields? Why don't general microbiology journals follow The Lancet in advising authors to try out their first drafts on researchers in other fields before submission?

One final suggestion. Those who simply cannot suppress the urge to brandish assertions of the unquestionable, the tautological, the fully familiar, and the utterly boring should finish, not begin, their papers in this way. Dullness doesn't matter so much down there.