110 8 Outcomes and Results
the blood of children in those cities against time in years. The two curves followed
each other almost exactly. The obvious (but wrong) conclusion that the unwary
reader would draw is that lead in blood is proportional to lead from petrol, with the
corollary that all that one had to worry about in a program to control lead in blood
was reducing the lead emissions from burning petrol. If the authors had plotted
one against the other, without worrying about the distraction of the years in which
the various values were generated, they would have found that the correlation was
much less pronounced, showing that, although lead from petrol was an important
contributor to lead in blood, it was not the only one.
With the ready availability of rich tools for creating graphs, such as three-dimen-
sional and coloured plots, the challenge for the author is to repeatedly ask the ques-
tions: Is this element necessary? And it is tasteful? No-one wants to read a thesis
where every page is a blaze of iridescent colour like some sort of firework display.
The more detail, the less likely that it will be correctly understood. My advice is that
you should test your graphs (and other diagrams too of course) on someone, and
listen to what they have to say. If they don’t understand what is going on, simplifica-
tion may be required.
Despite this availability of plotting tools, some people, mysteriously, still take
their data and plot it by hand using software that is intended for creating pictures
and diagrams. Do not do this; it will look ridiculous (or fraudulent) to every expe-
rienced reader.
Some theses in lab disciplines used to include photographs of equipment such
as assemblies used for preparation of chemicals; maybe they still do. I am not per-
suaded that such photos are more useful than a diagram, and, in general, while I’ve
seen a good number of cases where the photograph was included but seemed un-
necessary, I can’t recall a case where I thought more photos were required. Some-
times it is clear that photos are necessary (images of healthy and unhealthy cells,
for example, or captured images of computer screens that demonstrate a software
interface) but, for example, is it really appropriate to include photos of the teenagers
interviewed about their eating habits? Maybe, but probably not; we all know that
unhealthy eating can have consequences for appearance, and such photos can pass
judgment on the individuals and suggest that the researcher has biases that may
undermine the objectiveness of the research.
A picture speaks a thousand words, we’re told. What words does a poor picture
speak? One thing that really bugs me, and forgive me if I have said this already in
some form, is the fact that some students appear to be comfortable with including
truly appalling illustrations in their work. I am always astonished by the students
who labour for days or longer over a fragment of text but are comfortable with a
jumbled, clumsy picture that doesn’t really illustrate anything. Unfamiliarity with
tools is certainly part of this problem, as is the ‘but I am not an artist’ excuse. Per-
haps they say to themselves that artwork is out of their expertise, and use this as a
reason to quickly sketch something without even seeking advice.
The elementary tools for drawing figures and graphs with which most students
are familiar, when used in an elementary way, are designed to be used by people
whose use of computers is, well, elementary. They are used by children even before