I don't grade undergrad lab reports (there are many reasons I am not an academic, and this is on the list), but I do encounter scientific writing by some moderate range of working scientists. While I agree wholeheartedly that failures of understanding lead to failures of writing, I'd say that it's not just a matter of understanding the science; it's also about understanding what the reader might want to learn about the science, and how to convey that. Most of the bad scientific writing I find in the wild takes no account of how people actually read papers (or proposals or whatever), and it often makes me question whether the bad writer in question has done much reading themself.
I tend to think that a good chunk of bad academic writing stems from the same problem I talk about, namely that the authors don't have as complete an understanding of their material as they ought to have. But there's definitely another big chunk that's a writing-to-an-audience problem, in which they mistakenly assume readers will know information that they don't, or be interested in things that they aren't.
I think you've hit the nail on the head, here. When I was in engineering school and churning these things out, I just wanted to get it done, and even if I understood *what* I was doing, I was too green to know *what* about it was important.
I don't grade undergrad lab reports (there are many reasons I am not an academic, and this is on the list), but I do encounter scientific writing by some moderate range of working scientists. While I agree wholeheartedly that failures of understanding lead to failures of writing, I'd say that it's not just a matter of understanding the science; it's also about understanding what the reader might want to learn about the science, and how to convey that. Most of the bad scientific writing I find in the wild takes no account of how people actually read papers (or proposals or whatever), and it often makes me question whether the bad writer in question has done much reading themself.
I tend to think that a good chunk of bad academic writing stems from the same problem I talk about, namely that the authors don't have as complete an understanding of their material as they ought to have. But there's definitely another big chunk that's a writing-to-an-audience problem, in which they mistakenly assume readers will know information that they don't, or be interested in things that they aren't.
I think you've hit the nail on the head, here. When I was in engineering school and churning these things out, I just wanted to get it done, and even if I understood *what* I was doing, I was too green to know *what* about it was important.