BIOL 682: Communication in the Biological Sciences
Writing clearly, telling compelling stories, and navigating peer review in science.
Science that isn't communicated effectively might as well not exist. The ability to write clearly and tell a compelling story is what separates a finding buried in a forgotten journal from one that reshapes how a field thinks. Yet most graduate training treats writing as an afterthought — something you'll "pick up" while running gels and writing code.
This course takes the opposite view. Good scientific writing is a craft that can be taught, practiced, and refined. Every manuscript is a narrative: it has characters (your study system), conflict (the gap in knowledge), and resolution (your results and what they mean). Learning to see your science as a story — and to communicate that story with precision and clarity — will make you a better scientist at every stage of your career, from first-author papers to grant proposals to talks at international meetings.
The materials below support the writing, revision, and peer review components of the course. They are designed to be used iteratively — write, get feedback, revise, repeat — because that is how good scientific prose is actually produced.
Course Materials
A concise guide to the most common writing problems in biological manuscripts — from vague hedging and buried leads to misused jargon and passive voice overload. Use this as a checklist when self-editing drafts.
An example of a well-crafted LLM prompt for getting detailed revision feedback on a manuscript draft. Notice how specific and structured it is — then try writing your own short, vague prompt for the same task and compare the quality of the responses you get back.
The LLM's response to the revision prompt above. Notice the depth and specificity of the feedback — this is what a carefully structured prompt produces. Experiment by giving an LLM a simple prompt like "review my paper" and see how different the output is.
Another example of a well-crafted LLM prompt, this time focused on getting peer review feedback. Shows how to structure a prompt that produces a useful, detailed critique rather than generic commentary.
The LLM's response to the peer review prompt above. Shows the kind of detailed, reviewer-style critique a well-structured prompt can generate. Try asking an LLM to simply "review my paper" and compare the results.