Biological Literature

Catalog description

This course provides students with the fundamentals of scientific thinking and scientific writing. The course starts with a brief overview of the history and philosophy of science as it pertains to biology. Students will learn about empiricism, parsimony, and how to apply the scientific method to developing and testing hypotheses. Students will be taught how to write in scientific style; naming conventions, how to cite scientific names, how to avoid obfuscatory scrivenry, establishing flow, organizing a scientific document, how to write an abstract, how to present scientific data and statistics, how to cite figures and tables, how to cite scientific sources, how to avoid plagiarism, and how to find scientific information. Concepts of bioethics will be presented at the end of the semester. Crosslisted with: BSC 201.