Editing Guide to technical writing (section)

==Words to avoid==
Certain words are best avoided in scientific writing because they are imprecise or have little value in a science context.

* '''Good''' and '''bad.'''  Always avoid using these words because they are value judgements have have no real place in the physical sciences.  Instead of talking about an electronic device being "good" or "bad" it is better to be more precise and talk in terms of the property that is desirable or not desirable for required operation.  If you call something "good" it leaves too many questions in the mind of the reader:  "good compared to what and good in what regard?"  The same goes for "bad." So it is better to describe the quantities directly rather than using these meaningless value statements. There may be some rare exceptions to watch out for, for example, in the area of cybersecurity papers it is acceptable to call an attacker a "bad actor."  But in this context it is a special phrase.

* '''Believe''' or '''belief.'''  These words are banned in scientific writing. Remember whilst we as scientists have our own private beliefs, these are independent of our science in the lab and the models we describe. We never 'believe' in our models, we merely try our best to falsify them so what we have remaining are models that have a high likelihood of being accurate in most circumstances.  We recognize that every model breaks down, when applied to extreme circumstances outside of our current achievable measurement range. So our models are always approximate descriptions, not truths. A good scientist/engineer always has some awareness of when a model breaks. So where are the truths?  Well, we can identify truths in a relative manner:  it is true that the height of the Eiffel tower relative to the height of an apple tree is taller. We can measure that. But matters of absolute truth belong in the realm of our private faith and not in our models we describe. In Bayesian statistics, the literature does often talk about a "prior" being based on the "belief" of the observer. I personally avoid using "belief" in this context. A scientist is supposed to avoid belief and cognitive bias. It is better to talk about the Bayesian prior as being an initial guess or estimate.

* '''Popular.''' Never use the word "popular" in scientific writing. In science we deal with objectivity; whereas popularity contests are subjective. If you are, for example, talking about an ubiquitous electronic device; rather than describing it as "popular" consider using phrases such as "commonly used" or "predominantly used."