Sarah Lambert                                                                                 about 260 words

sel15@geneseo.edu

Student, INTD 105-19: Scientific Writing

Bruce Bower’s Public-Facing Article

By Sarah Lambert

    To achieve the appeal of the majority of society in science writing takes a skilled writer who can manipulate data, statistics, experiments, arguments and facts into comprehensible information and still appear educated in their sophisticated language. Often, it is a challenge for those outside of the science community to understand the data and complicated language of those within it. Writers who can effectively illustrate the events occurring in the science community are valued by those who wish to know what is going on and struggle to understand scientific language as these writers are essentially translators for these outsiders.

    Bruce Bower’s article, “Chimps, other apes take mind reading to humanlike level,”  effectively conveys and synthesizes several experiments done on chimpanzees and their reactions to other ‘ false beliefs. Bower relies on evidence like direct quotes, such as, “‘Apes anticipated that an individual would search for an object where he last saw it, even though the apes knew that the object was no longer there,’ says evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye.” He also includes data like, “Experiments included 41 apes — 19 chimps, 15 bonobos and seven orangutans.” This allows Bower to appeal to the logical aspects of the reader’s mind. These logical appeals develop Bower’s effectiveness in terms of this scientific writing because it allows him to develop evidence that the reader can comprehend and see the reasoning behind and within the experiments,

    Having an effective style of writing is very important when it comes to the sciences; it allows the rest of society to understand what’s going on around the world. More of Bower’s article can be read here: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chimps-other-apes-take-mind-reading-humanlike-level