"Finally, use the passive voice," Kris, the teaching assistant, instructed me and my classmates as we prepared to write our first animal-physiology lab report.
Being a journalism major as well as a biology major, and having been well schooled in the virtues of the active voice, I had to challenge the instruction. Why must I use the passive voice? Kris confided that she agreed with me—using the active voice makes writing much more interesting, concise, and clear—but she had it on good authority that we'd never get a paper published in a high-profile journal if we didn't use the passive voice.
She would be delighted and probably astonished to learn that I've worked for Cell Press for the last 15 years and that not once have we rejected a paper because an author failed to write in the passive voice. In fact, one of our editors recently encouraged authors to use the active voice (see Milka Kostic's tips on getting your paper published with as little frustration as possible). What's more, a great deal of the grammatical errors my copyediting team and I fix are the result of poorly constructed passive sentences, so we often revise sentences in the active voice to address those errors.
Passive voice has nothing to do with scientific objectivity
The main argument in favor of using the passive voice in scientific writing is that it injects objectivity into a research paper.
Of course, maintaining objectivity is of the utmost importance in science, but the argument in favor of the passive voice is wrong for two reasons. First, when people talk about maintaining objectivity, they are really talking about avoiding the first person, which is what writers employ any time they use the pronouns I, we, me, us, my, or our. Perhaps because it's so easy to leave out the subject—we, for example—in a passive sentence, many people think that using the passive voice means not identifying the one doing the action.
In my previous two posts, I explained how to identify the passive voice and why it's usually best to avoid it (hint: eliminating passive voice is a great way to reduce your manuscript's word count). Here, suffice it to say that the passive voice has nothing to do with pronoun usage. I can write active sentences in the first person (like this), and passive sentences can also be written by me in the first person (see?).
Furthermore, active sentences need not, and usually do not, involve using the first person.
For example, consider the following passive sentences and how we might revise them (passive verb phrases are underlined):
It has recently been found that antibodies that bind quaternary E protein might contribute to this effect.
Protein was not removed from the centrosome by exposure to nocodozole.
Here are two possible ways to place these sentences in the active voice:
Recent studies have found that antibodies that bind quaternary E protein might contribute to this effect.
Exposure to nocodozole did not remove protein from the centrosome.
Note that neither of these revisions involves using the first person.
The second reason the traditional argument against the active voice is wrong is that avoiding the use of first-person pronouns doesn't make text objective.
Let's assume for a moment that writing a paper entirely in the active voice necessitates using the first person occasionally (it doesn't, but we'll get to that later). So what? I fail to see how writing the cells were lysed is more objective than writing we lysed the cells. Neither statement offers an opinion, and regardless of how one writes the sentence, the reality is that humans were involved in planning, conducting, and analyzing the research. No amount of passive voice is going to change that.
Scientists should of course conduct their research as objectively as possible. When they explain what they've done and how they've done it, they should write objectively, too. That doesn't mean pretending they didn't do the work, though. It simply means leaving emotion and personal biases out of the picture as much as possible and sticking to the facts.
The resulting stains were perceived as beautiful is a passive sentence. It's also totally subjective.
Now, some of you might be thinking that, even though I've made valid points, a lot of scientists disagree, and many of those who do are bound to be reviewers. I concede the point. But, at least at Cell Press, scientific editors still get to make the final call. So, please, don't be afraid to say you conducted your own work.
And if, despite my assurances, you're still afraid to use the first person, I hope I've at least convinced you that using the active voice is an entirely different thing.
It's possible to write in the active voice and still avoid the first person
Jump back to the late 1990s and my animal-physiology lab. After a bit of discussion, Kris agreed that I could write the paper in the active voice—as long as I avoided using the first person. She was humoring me, though. What I wanted to do was clearly impossible.
I feel like I should put one of those "don't try this at home" labels right about here. It was hard. Really hard. But I did it, and it was worth every second of jaw-dropping astonishment and admiration from the teaching assistant.
But, really, don't try this at home. It isn't necessary. We'll accept your paper in the first person, in the active voice. In fact, your editor might prefer it that way.