how to write right (technically speaking)

  AI, aka artificial intelligence, has been hotter than Hades since Open AI released ChatGPT in November of 2022. And it is impressive. I was certainly blown away at how good a writer it is, at least for the responses it has given me for various technical questions I've asked. But beware: AIs have a definite writing style, something I was able to detect when two students submitted very similar essays to a prompt I gave them in November of 2022. However, researchers (and everyone, really) need to be extremely careful when using AI because, and I don't know how to put this politely, AI is a bullshitter.  I first experienced the bullshitting when I asked it to provide a response along with supporting references on a question I had about evaporation. ChatGPT provided a well-written responsive response with several references. Being anal retentive (that is, a good researcher), I wanted to see the words the reference used with my own eyes. That turned into a two-hour black hole of t...

keep things where things belong Outlining technical papers and reports is not exactly janitorial science. My basic go-to outline is: - Abstract - Introduction - Background - Methods - Results and Discussion - Conclusions - Acknowledgments - References Yawn.  For a report, the “Abstract” will become the longer “Executive Summary” instead. If I’m feeling a little snappy, I might change the section titles to be a bit more descriptive of the work at hand. For example, here’s the outline for a report I coauthored on a review of springs in Texas: - Executive Summary - Introduction - Database Development and Evaluation of Spring Status - Spring Analysis - Fractal Analysis - Future Work - Conclusions - Acknowledgments - References - Appendix In this case, “Database Development and Evaluation of Spring Status” stands in for “Methods” and “Spring Analysis,” “Fractal Analysis,” and "Future Work" stand in for “Results and Discussion.” In fact, "Fractal Analysis" really exists a...