Prof Steve Jones is also gifted and witty, and he loves puns and word-play which makes him perfect to be a popular science communicator. This book is a collection of writing from his column called 'View from the Lab'. His word limit is short enough to keep him pretty disciplined, and he writes very well, sometimes sharing the camaraderie and sniping of the academic world. He tells the reader, for example, about the conferences he goes to, and how the British delegates look more down at heel than those from other nations, like "someone who has come to look at the drains". Sir Paul Nurse, apparently, looks like a window cleaner.
He gives an example of rudeness from an academic from John Hopkins University who took exception to something Steve Jones wrote in a book review, and after a short discourse emailed him: "Have you thought of taking psychiatric advice for your delusional, paranoid disorder?" Wow. This is a preface to explaining that current research shows that a gene for paranoia is connected to a mechanism for speeding up the activity of the brain which allowed man to evolve from the ape. I have simplified Prof Jones's explanation, which is more detailed.
Prof Jones is interested in many kinds of science, including maths and politics, the art world, anthropology and travel and ah! almost everything. This means he has a great deal to draw on to enliven and illustrate his science writing.
I am particularly fond of Prof Jones because I have done some linguistics research on his science writing. My work was too superficial and too short to be of much use because I was an undergraduate with only a short word limit to play with. But here it is in summary:
The interesting thing is that grammatically, the more specialist and academic the style, the simpler the sentence construction. This is because processes are cast as long nominalisations often linked with is, or are, or may be - variations on the verb to be or to have. The writer is also less likely to allow himself a personality, as he keeps to impersonal constructions which allow him/her to assume a distant and authoritative persona. He uses a great deal of specialised lexis which allows him to assume the authority of an expert.
Prof Jones moved forward in time and his writing became much more certain in tone and he allowed himself to ask direct questions - initiating a relationship with his readership - which made his writing more personal, more witty, and easier to connect with. He abandoned some of his relational verbs in favour of verbs which relate to reporting and the material world. He used more clauses per sentence.
When he writes for the newspaper his writing uses very few specialist terms and he explains those which are not in general use. He writes often in the first person and, by writing about personal experience, assumes a friendly personality. His verbs are very varied and illuminating as they carry the idea of processes. They explain and illustrate rather than merely state. Meanwhile, the number of clauses per sentence averages nearly three, (although some sentences have only one clause), which illustrates a shift towards the patterns of speech.
The naughty thing about Steve Jones, as far as I can tell from the limited research that I have carried out, is that he is less likely to cite his colleagues "in text" using the word "by", e.g. Research by Plinker and Plonker (2011) shows blahblahblah, than his peer group, which uses it fairly often. Prof Jones almost never does, unless he refers to Darwin or some other eminence. In this way he links himself to the legendary rather than the run of the mill.
The best thing about this particular book is there is an index. The articles are all stuffed with facts, but have titles which are witty rather than descriptive. The best way to find particular items is through the index.
As usual, there is very little in the way of citing other people's research, unless they are household names.
You can hear an interview (17 minutes) with Prof Jones talking engagingly about snails and genes and many other things.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00nf603
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