2007年12月，街がすっかりクリスマスのイルミネーションに彩られた頃，その人は来日した。医学論文執筆のエキスパート，Thomas A. Lang氏だ。彼は米国・カリフォルニアのTom Lang Communications＆Trainingを拠点に，メディカルライティングやサイエンスコミュニケーターの育成に力を注ぐ，その道の第一人者。サイエンスエディター評議会の前会長でもあり，2002年には，これまでの功績を称えられ，米国メディカルライター協会から会長賞を贈られた。

　Lang氏の行動範囲は米国だけではない。日本や中国など，英語を母国語としない国でもメディカルライターの養成コースや講習会を開くなど，その活動は柔軟かつグローバル。英語で行われるとはいえ，例え話を交えながらの講義はわかりやすく，ファンが多いというのも頷ける。われわれのインタビュー中にも得意の例え話が飛び出し，医学英語論文を“書く，読む，直す”のエキスパートは，どんなときも決して手を抜かないのだった。

編集部　「医学論文執筆の指導をされているということですが，お仕事の内容を具体的に教えてください」

Lang 氏

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I do many things.

A large part of my work is editing scientific articles for publication in peer-review journals. Most of what I do is in clinical medicine, but some of what I do is in basic research, basic science journals.

I will receive a manuscript usually by e-mail and I will spend considerable amount of time editing the manuscript. I will provide full copy-editing services, full substituent editing services to make sure that the logic is continuous and the arguments are supported.

I will review the figures and tables and make sure that the text is logically consistent, internally consistent. I will rewrite titles, I will rewrite abstracts, I will rewrite introductions, I will heavily edit and rewrite things.

I will also do analytical editing. I will check to make sure that the research designs and activities are accurately and completely reported. I will look at the statistical presentations and decide if they are completely reported or not.

I will make sure that the conclusions of the paper are supported by data in the paper and that the abstract is consistent with the paper itself, which is a very common problem. I will create new tables if necessary. I will put the data in those tables if the data are there, if not, I will create a blank table and suggest to the author that this is the better way to present the data, I will do the same with figures.

Lang 氏

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Another large part of my job as a consulting medical writer, editor, is teaching. I teach at the University of Chicago, on their medical writing program, and I teach at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia on their medical writing master's degree program.

So I work with students who...at the University of Chicago are mid-career professionals who are changing jobs. They are maybe laboratory technicians or even physicians who are leaving their current job and wanting to move into medical writing as profession. Many times into the pharmaceutical industry, sometimes into scientific publications.

I also deal with students just out of their baccalaureate programs who want to go onto pharmaceutical writing and getting a master's in medical writing to do that. I will consult in some other areas in terms of how to help authors select journals that they should submit their manuscript to.

I also teach not just medical writing and editing, and statistical reporting, but also writing technical reports. I teach the theories in research findings on evidence-based writing and editing. So I do a lot of teaching for the American Medical Writers Association and the Council of Science Editors. All in relation to medical writing and editing, written communication or scientific publications.

編集部　「授業では実際にどのように指導していらっしゃいますか？」

Lang 氏

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Be best way I know to train medical writers and editors is a process that I call mentor guided analytical thinking and I can send you a document on this, if you like.

You sit down in a group of maybe ten people and each person has the same manuscript in front of them. And we start at one end of the circle, and the first person takes the sentence, reads it at loud, and then analyzes the sentence in detail, what does the sentence mean, how does it fit with the ones that preceded, the ones that follow it.

Is the punctuation correct, is the term correct, could it be shortened. If this sentence is true, what else must be true as a result. If this sentence is true, what else must have been true before hand. And we do this process for several hours at a time and the first person takes the first sentence, the second person takes the second sentence and so forth.

Lang 氏

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And then my job is to ask each person questions, I want to get them to think in a different way about writing. Intelligence is knowing what to attend to. If I can teach you to attend to the right thing, I can make you more intelligent. And as an example that we use is, "Can you list the colors of the rainbow in order?"

Most people can remember most of the colors, but sometimes they don't list them in a right order. But if I give you a memory aid, I can make you more intelligent. So I tell you to remember the name "ROY, G, BIV", now you can write down the colors; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. You can write all the colors down and in order and that's the right answer.

So I have made you more intelligent by helping you attend to focus on the right things. And what this mentor guided analytical thinking process is the purpose of that is to help people attend to the right things about the paper.

編集部　「最後に，医学論文を書く上で一番大切なことを教えてください」

Lang 氏

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Because the title is the most often part read and the usually only part read. So the title has to be very clear so that a reader can say I need to read this and it turns out that he or she does need to read it, or I don't need to read this and in fact he or she doesn’t need to read it. So the titles is the most important part of the scientific article.

Lang 氏

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The abstract is the second most important part.

After that I would favor introduction because that a good introduction will tell people what the article is about. And by the end of the introduction, if you have read the title, the abstract and the introduction, you should be absolutely clear that you either need to read the paper or you don't need to read it.

Lang氏による「アブストラクトの書き方のコツ」を知りたい人はこちらへ