Slate (New York, April 1) -- As a group, scientists are not widely admired for their prose style. To no small extent, this derives from their insistence on the passive voice. Nevertheless, the style has its defenders: Two experts in scientific style recently took to Reddit to debate the convention, taking positions for and against the passive voice in scientific writing. Celia Elliott, a grant writing specialist in the Department of Physics at Illinois, took a stand on behalf of the passive voice, but to do so she first had to explain it.