Abstract
Over the last seven years, I have spent time across three continents talking to scientists and mathematicians about their beliefs and attitudes and experiences related to writing in their respective disciplines. I have been impressed by the passion and insight with which most have talked about writing and its relationship to critical thinking, and I have often been surprised by how they engage in these practices. For example, rather than working from an a priori hypothesis, many researchers in the STEM disciplines compose backwards, from the results to the introduction. And when reading, many seem to move from the middle of a paper outwards, beginning with the results and method, using an extremely critical eye, and then perhaps scanning out to the introduction and the discussion, or dispensing with these sections altogether. Over and over again, I heard this same story from different scientists, as if it were a secret each alone had stumbled upon.