A Presentation Given and a Presentation Attended

Greetings again. I hope that all is going well for you.

Thursday and Friday, I gave a workshop at the (US) National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. I had been invited by Dr. Banalata (Bono) Sen, who is an editor at Environmental Health Perspectives and an AuthorAID mentor. Most of my presentations at the workshop were about writing scientific papers.

As requested, I also gave a presentation on careers in science communication. This presentation has now been added to the AuthorAID Resource Library. The websites of organizations listed in the presentation are good sources of information on communicating science.

Shortly after returning, I attended an interesting and enjoyable presentation. It was at a banquet of our regional American Medical Writers Association chapter.

The speaker was actor Megan Cole, who had written a short play about Maud Mellish, the first editor at the Mayo Clinic (a famous American clinic). Ms. Cole talked about writing the play, and she performed some parts of it.

Later, my husband found that a book by Mellish, The Writing of Medical Papers, is openly accessible online. Although this book was published in 1922, much of the advice in it remains valid.

For example, Mellish wrote (on page 69), “A paper should be brief and clear, demanding only enough of the time and patience of the reader to permit the presentation . . . of the essential points.”

Good advice for papers reporting research in any field!