<p>I know this isn’t QUITE related to a science major but I think science majors would know best. I have my school’s research symposium and my board is a compilation of past research from my mentor and then it all culminates into our FUTURE research that we will be doing this summer. The last sentence of our abstract talks about our summer research. Should we use the word “we” as in (not going to be too specific so you don’t know what my research is…)“We will be doing research on yada yada this summer” or “Research will be done in the future on yada yada”??</p>
<p>Heh, that’s good question. Some people hate it whn they see any personal pronouns in an abstract. I say you write whatever you want and if they want to reject your abstract based on that, they’re not worth your time. I use personal pronouns (especially “we”) in papers all the time, even when it’s technically just “me” that I’m referring to.</p>
<p>Human language is far too interesting to pretend that disallowing the use of personal pronouns can make all professional written work sound more professional. It’s a useless and silly exercise to say so. People can’t even agree about whether to put curly braces on the same line as the function declaration or on the next line… once people have figured that out, get back to me about natural language.</p>
<p>You’ll get different opinions on whether personal pronouns are appropriate in a scientific paper. I find the real problem with avoiding personal pronouns is that it is often linked to writing in a passive voice rather than an active voice.</p>
<p>I agree with Robert Day’s position in his book “How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper”:</p>
<p>"In any type of writing, the active voice is usually more precise and less wordy than the passive voice. (This is not always true; if it were, we would have an Eleventh Commandment: “The passive voice should never be used.”) Why, then, do scientists insist on using the passive voice? Perhaps this bad habit is the result of the erroneous idea that it is somehow impolite to use first-person pronouns. As a result, the scientist typically uses such verbose (and imprecise) statements as “It was found that” in preference to the short, unambiguous “I found.”</p>
<p>I herewith ask all young scientists to renounce the false modesty of previous generations of scientists. Do not be afraid to name the agent of the action in a sentence, even when it is “I” or “we.” Once you get into the habit of saying “I found”, you will also find that you have a tendency to write “S. Aureus produced lactate” rather than “Lactate was produced by S. Aureus.” (Note that the “active” statement is in three words; the passive requires five).</p>
<p>You can avoid the passive voice by saying “The authors found” instead of “it was found.” Compare with the simple “we”, however, “the authors” is pretentious, verbose, and imprecise (which authors?)."</p>
<p>He also says:</p>
<p>“If you use first-person pronouns, use both the singular and the plural forms as needed. Do not use the “editorial we” in place of “I.” The use of “we” by a single author is outrageously pedantic.”</p>
<p>At the risk of dating myself, my copy of his book is the first edition; I noticed the other day that my wife has the second edition on her bookshelf; and I see on Amazon that the book is now at the sixth edition. It was very useful to me, and I recommend it.</p>