The convention that lab reports are to be written in the third person

What is the point this? If the writer of the lab report was part of the group conducting the experiments, it would be natural and intuitive to write in the first person, so how did the third-person rule come about?

So many conventions of academic writing seem to serve no practical purpose beyond making writing sound awkward and unnatural. (See also: "Do not use contractions in formal writing.")

Comments

  • edited 2018-02-26 18:31:26
    kill living beings
    easy-to-grade convention that imposes an easy-to-fill form on people who are bad at writing, like engineers

    similar to five paragraph essays

    practicing scientists and engineers don't actually do this religiously and sometimes.... don't even use passive voice!!!
  • I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god
    I suspect it's more to maintain consistency than anything else. Also, I think many standards like the "don't use contractions" one have loosened up a great deal. In formal writing, it's just as important to know when to break the rules as it is to know when to follow them.
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    "people who are bad at writing, like engineers"

    gwa ha ha
  • edited 2018-02-26 19:56:49
    ಠ_ಠ
    It’s because it’s more professional, and when it comes to being published, it doesn’t sound like the person is boasting. When I did my dissertation, the first thing that was drilled into my head was to write in third person.

    What sounds better: “I added acid into the test tube and nothing happened, which wasn’t expected”

    Or

    “100 millilitres of hydrochloric acid was added to the test tube. No results were recorded, which was not the expected result.”

    It just looked better and more formal, which is needed when it’s being published in a professional paper.
  • Sorry, I’ve just had to write so many lab reports that first person reports look wrong.
  • edited 2018-02-26 20:14:25
    kill living beings
    Maybe for a method, but for the actual content it seems pretty normal to do something else

    off the top of my head, "A quantitative description of membrane current and its application to conduction and excitation in nerve" is written in first person

    image

    It also starts with "This article"!
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