Fellow HistArchers:
I disagree with our learned colleague from Delaware: public and
technical writing are two different animals, the one growing out of the
other.
True, technical reports can be interesting, at least to fellow
professionals and some well-informed and curious avocationalists. A
report that isn't interesting generally lacks a well-educated, well-read
author and/or a well-developed research design with questions that stand
a ghost's chance of being answered by the data at hand, or likely to be
recovered. These reports must contain the nitty gritty details of
methods, findings, and analyses, including discussions of various
multi-variate statistical techniques where appropriate. This is not the
stuff of public writing.
Interpretive products--books, articles, plays, operas, paintings,
etc.--must be based on thorough research and analysis; therefore, the
technical report comes first, then the interpretive work.
If review agencies and their representatives have grown tired of reading
endless dry details that have no bearing on anything that anyone is
interested in, complying only with the strict interpretation of
regulations, then they should put a stop to the practice. Issue
technical guidelines that specifically describe acceptable parameters
for Phase I research designs and Phase II/III research designs,
requiring well-defined questions that are appropriate for the subject. I
know a report will be boring, and reading it will be unrewarding, when I
examine the research design and find that it lacks clear interesting
questions and a discussion of methods appropriate for answering those
questions.
Granted, this is the stuff of graduate studies, and even upper level
undergraduate work, but a review of compliance reports will convince
most readers that alot of investigators just don't have the scientific
method down pat. I'm not talking about a hypothetico-deductive approach
to all work, just an element of scientific rigor and standards by which
an investigator informs readers about what he or she regards as
acceptable evidence in evaluating a particular problem and methods for
collecting and analyzing that evidence.
Well-defined, interesting questions, providing the bases for appropriate
methods and analyses, will go a long way toward production of reports
that are both readable and useful. These reports then provide a solid
basis for public interpretation and sharing of information.
It's Sunday, and that's my sermon. Class is ended, go in peace.
Jim Gibb
Annapolis, MD USA
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