It's not just specificity. Take for example the physical sciences' tradition of using passive voice, exclusively, when writing about the methods used in an experiment. You never write "We poured the mixture" or "We measured the transmittance", but rather "The mixture was poured into a 250ml Erlenmeyer flask" and "Transmittance was measured using a model 500 spectrophotometer with a 580nm filter".
The reason, as anyone who has read and followed more than a few "Materials and Methods" sections can tell you, is that this style of writing makes it very easy to skim through and find the relevant bits. The last thing you want to have to do with a pipette in hand is wade through someone's flowery prose to find out how many microliters to dispense.
The reason, as anyone who has read and followed more than a few "Materials and Methods" sections can tell you, is that this style of writing makes it very easy to skim through and find the relevant bits. The last thing you want to have to do with a pipette in hand is wade through someone's flowery prose to find out how many microliters to dispense.