Write in the first person to avoid unintended causal claims

In academic writing, we’ve historically been encouraged to write in a detached way, avoiding the first person. We often see the passive voice (“an experiment was carried out”). Increasingly, we realize that awkward writing doesn’t help others to understand what we’re writing.

In fact, I have found that writing in the first person helps to make a clearer distinction between “facts/findings” and “interpretation” more clearly. For example, I can observe/state that there is a relationship in the data, and separately that we are interpreting this as whatever we want to say… it’s much easier to avoid causal claims where we don’t want to make them.

Published 27 August 2024