Biology Editing and Proofreading Services

A paper sets out to investigate the role of a gene in a process. It finds several things, all interesting, and concludes that the gene plays a complex role. Nothing in the paper could have come out differently — there was no result that would have counted as the answer being no, and a study that cannot fail is a study that has not tested anything.

We edit what biologists write — journal articles and their hypothesis and results sections, experimental design descriptions, model organism and system justification, results reported against predictions, discussion sections and their claims, grant applications and their aims, review articles and their synthesis, thesis chapters and progress reports, and preprints and their revision. Our editors work on the hypothesis that has to be capable of being wrong.

A falsifiable prediction is the spine of a biological paper, and its failure is an aim expressed as an investigation. "To investigate the role of X in Y" cannot be answered, and everything downstream inherits the vagueness — the experiments become a collection, the results become findings, and the discussion becomes a list of possibilities. We work through these so the hypothesis is stated as a claim about the world with the observation that would contradict it, since a reader should be able to say what result would have refuted the paper; so each experiment is introduced with the prediction it tests rather than the technique it uses, because "we performed RNA-seq" describes an activity and "if the gene acts upstream, we predicted the downstream targets would fall" describes a test; so the result is reported against the prediction, including where it did not match, given that a partial match honestly described is far more persuasive than a narrative smoothed to fit; so an unexpected result is presented as unexpected with what it rules out, as this is where most real biology happens and papers routinely bury it; so the alternative explanation is named and the experiment that would distinguish it is stated even where it was not done; so the model system's limits are given in terms of what the result cannot be extended to; and so the discussion says what the paper has closed off rather than only what it opens up. Papers written this way say something that could have been otherwise.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including unpublished data, manuscripts and grant material. We are editors rather than biologists, and we offer no view on your hypotheses, experiments or conclusions. What we can do is make the claim capable of being wrong.