Thursday, October 29, 2020

citing science


October 10's blog post made me wonder: to what extent can you use and quote (scientific) information found in other books? 

I'm thinking about a situation where you use another book as a source of information for a different narrative and rephrase said information in your own style. That you properly attribute the other book as the source, goes beyond saying. 
 

The standard in science is to quote (not rephrase) and cite.

That is if you're using an explanation of a scientific concept, you quote the explanation and then cite the person who published it.

This falls under fair use for scholarly purposes.

But if you're discussing how gravity works, you don't have to quote and cite Isaac Newton.

Some things are in the general body knowledge: gravity, history dates, that the Sexiest Man Alive should be given in perpetuity to Idris Elba.

 

How do you know which is which? There's the fun part.

Have citations at the ready in case you're asked. Facts are not proprietary.

4 comments:

Karen McCoy said...

Science also has its own citation styles. Usually APA (American Psychological Association) is used. Sometimes others. Footnotes can also be useful. And Janet is right...common knowledge (e.g. the sky is blue) does not need to be cited...it's only for facts that aren't as well known. Good luck!

Craig F said...

Part of it depends on what genre you write in. Sci-Fi readers are used to having strange science as part of the plot.

Some thriller and police procedurals are pretty used to a chunk of undenoted science as the goal of both sides.

Romance readers believe in a different kind of science.

AJ Blythe said...

Janet, are you talking about non-fiction or fiction?

In a fiction manuscript, if the character would know the science because of their profession, you have them say it (in their/your own words) but you wouldn't need to reference how you learnt that information would you? I never read citations in fiction, but their is often a reference in the acknowledgements.

Aphra Pell said...

"The standard in science is to quote (not rephrase) and cite.

That is if you're using an explanation of a scientific concept, you quote the explanation and then cite the person who published it."

Apologies for contradicting our sharkly Queen, but this isn't the standard at all in academic / research science (e.g. scientific papers, academic books etc) - we actively teach our students to avoid direct quotes as far as possible, as paraphrasing (always with citation of the original sources) allows them to critically synthesise information from more than one source into a discussion. It also recognises that there is rarely a single source of suthority for a scientific concept - in a paper, I can be citing 4 or 5 other pieces of research to support a single sentence.

Direct quoting is reserved for short pieces of information where the exact words are so important that paraphrasing would be ethically inappropriate - e.g. quoting part of an important speech or text.

The popular science books I can remember generally work similarly - paraphrasing with footnote / endnote references for most of the information, and quotes where it is the writer / speaker's words which are important.

I'm not sure how it would work in fiction - probably similarly to the way historical research is incorporated in hist fic (i.e. without citation in the text, but often with references in the authors notes at the end)