: Parentheses in scientific writing I occasionally use parentheses in scientific writing when a piece of information is related to a previous statement but not to the central story. Is it bad

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While I do agree with Digital Dracula's comment about using footnotes instead of parentheses for anecdotic phrases, I feel your particular example is important enough to be left in the paragraph, without parentheses. It is important to avoid confusion from name similarities, specifically in scientific writing. And it reads nicely as it is.

Depending on the formatting of the paper, I might separate into smaller paragraphs. And since you enumerate the sections goal, which is correct scientific writing imo, I would keep the explaination of the process short, or even not talk about it now at all, keeping it for section 1 (I guess your section 1 is explaining the process in that case):

We use a fleeblesheemed plumbus to analyze floob concentrations in
groat dairy. Despite the similar name, this idea is not related to
the plumb-o-fleeb machine of Kimble et al. [1], which is used as a
krimkram lubricator for the production of shleem films in anorganic
blamf synthesis.

In Section 1, we explain in detail the steps of our method.
The necessary optimization
steps are later discussed in Section 2. Finally, in Section 3, we apply our
fleeblesheemed plumbus to 2016 floogro (714.A314).

Finally, contrary to
previous belief [2], we find that floob concentrations stay below
hazardous levels, when consumption occurs around midnight without
direct exposure to noom radiation.



[1] Kimble et al. Lorem Ipsum edition, volume 42th, 16th january 1980.

[2] You can't talk about previous belief without citing those beliefs

It nicely separates:

First the intention of your paper, discarding any missleading names or related process,
Then the steps of the process and how they are separated in sections, although I feel section 3's goal isn't quite understandable as is
And finally the conclusion you get to.

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@Digital Dracula mentioned it above. I'd use footnotes as asides in scientific writing. When you read research paper or science textbooks, you'll see an asterisk or two every other page, sometimes more. If you want, you can also add footnotes that relate to other chapters, extra sources cited for a bibliography, or things mentioned in the appendix. In short, footnotes can contain anything that might break up the flow of the main point of the text.

Different groups of symbols can represent different kinds of footnotes. The Bible, for example, annotates many different things using (let's just say) letters for references to other verses, asterisks and other symbols for alternative translations of a word/phrase, numbers for commentary, etc.

One cool thing about footnotes is that they can be as long as you want. I've read annotated versions of classic novels that have footnotes take up to two-thirds of a page and several paragraphs long, even with smaller font!

Hope this helps!

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