On 14/06/2020 06:11, Fred Lunnon wrote:
<< we scientists >> Oh dear ...
There are a number of linguistic tics that reveal considerably more about the author's insecurities than might either have been intended, or (presumably) preferred. Delete "we" ! Now !!
The "we" does two things. _One_ of them is to assert the author's inclusion in the (maybe) high-status category of "scientists", and if that were the only thing then I'd agree with your advice. But the _other_, which I think is more important here, is that it makes the sentence it's embedded in have the form "_we_ haven't done what we should have" instead of "_they_ haven't done what they should have", and for that reason I think it _mustn't_ go. If you want to avoid the first implication, deleting "scientists" would be better than deleting "we". -- g