Reporting on local government, I lean on public records — meeting recordings, press releases, select board packets — to fact-check things I hear over the phone. Back on my home turf, the science beat, it’s time to head-scratch over peer-reviewed publications. Being a reporter now rather than a biology student has changed the way I read those documents.
Peer-reviewed studies start with an abstract: a paragraph about the study’s trajectory and main takeaways. Space is tight — no more than 250 words, typically — which means authors get thrifty. The abstract can be crammed with undefined jargon. Research methods are rattled off with little rationale.
This spooked me when I was in college. I’d trudge through those abstracts, my eyes glazing over.
The abstract can seriously deter the general reader from going any further. Lately, I’ve been skipping it, making a beeline for the introduction section, which comes second. There, the prose can breathe, less constrained by a word limit. Researchers explain why they spend months, and sometimes years, studying this one little thing. They recap what their colleagues have sleuthed out, and they identify the mysteries that remain in their own corner of the field.
I’m more aware now that there is a real-life story behind every scientific study that usually doesn’t make it into the write-up. After reading the introduction, I now sail over the methods, results, and figures to land in the discussion, where researchers spotlight key findings and situate these in context.
Then I backtrack to the figures, where data becomes the storyteller, and to the methods underpinning the work. I won’t lie. As a student, I’d skim over these details. They seemed like a string of technical terms, spit-balled in rapid succession. But as a science journalist, I jot questions in the margins. I’ve learned that the jargon can hint at tales just waiting to be dug out in an interview with the researcher.
When I was writing about Wellfleet’s herring run, I came across this line about tagging fish in a 2021 study: “Tags were surgically implanted without anesthesia via a ventral incision using a No. 15 scalpel blade.”
I perked up when I read this. I called Derrick Alcott, the lead author, and asked him to unpack that sentence, and he regaled me with the play-by-play. One person steadies the wriggling fish, while a colleague pokes its belly with a scalpel. The tag slips right into the stomach cavity. Surgical glue seals the incision, and back into the water goes the fish. This all takes less than 60 seconds. I also hear about how Alcott spent countless grueling hours bobbing in a boat in Wellfleet Harbor, waiting for herring that might or might not show up.
Scientists enjoy “eureka moments” when they stumble on surprises in their data. But for me, in this role as a writer, the lightbulb goes on when I get to hear those nitty-gritty details that didn’t make the final cut in a peer-reviewed publication.