in order to

[marco_on_the_grassland]

I attended a seminar by someone who reviews papers written by Japanese scientists. She said, "There are many mistakes in the use of 'in order to'. For instance, the following sentence is grammatically incorrect: 'The suspended cells were centrifuged and collected again to investigate the recombination rate.' It should be corrected as follows: 'We [I (if the research was done and the paper has been written by a single author)] centrifuged the suspended cells and collected them again (in order) to investigate the recombination rate.' Not only Japanese but also foreigners (non-native English speakers), especially researchers, overuse 'in order to'. Moreover, even if 'in order to' is used instead of 'to', the subject of the verb following 'in order to' must match the subject of the sentence. It's not possible for 'the cells' to 'investigate something'. In fact, 'to' is sufficient. Using 'in order to' does not improve the quality of the paper," she said. I don't have any complaints about this advice myself, but I would like to confirm its correctness.

 

[Tarheel]

That's confusing. However, I would say there is nothing wrong with the original sentence.

 

[marco_on_the_grassland]

Discussing Japanese high school English grammar books, of course, every book includes the usage of "in order to" (meaning "for the purpose of"), and it is presumed that many high school graduates know its meaning itself. However, as far as I know, no book states that "the subject of this infinitive must match the subject of the sentence". The first time I heard about this was at the seminar. But after the seminar, when I carefully read through dozens of papers I had, almost all of them were as the seminar lecturer had said. However, there were a few where the subjects did not match, and when I looked at the authors, they were either presumably non-native English speakers or the papers were published in quite local journals. In the peer review of papers, English is corrected (in severe cases), but the peer readers themselves are chosen amongst people whose research field is close to that dealt with in the submitted paper, even if English is not their native language. Moreover, there are many "English journals published by organizations in non-English-speaking countries" in many countries (there are many in Japan too). This is for overseas researchrs to read them because English is the common tongue now. In some cases, even research papers containing "peculiar" English manage to pass peer review and get published. For example, in a paper published in a biochemistry journal issued in English in Germany, the past participle of "deal" was left as "dealed" and published as is, I found. What I mean to say is that both scientific papers and entrance exam questions are not necessarily absolute or perfect, so I simply want to know what is correct. Regarding the "subject mismatch of 'in order to'" issue, if educated native people of English say "there's nothing wrong with it" or "it's commonly used", then that might be correct. Another issue I want to know about is the case of "deliberately using 'in order to'" all the way instead of "to". What for?

 

[Tarheel]

That is hard to follow. What kind of comments are you looking for?

 

[jutfrank]

'The suspended cells were centrifuged and collected again to investigate the recombination rate.'

This sentence is fine. It's in a passive voice, and the agent is not explicitly mentioned. The agent, in this case the scientist(s) performing the experiment with the purpose of investigation, is the logical subject, which is what counts. The grammatical subject of the sentence is 'the suspended cells'. Of course, the cells didn't do any investigation.

 

[Rover_KE]

You can nearly always omit 'in order' before 'to'.

Save yourself some breath or keystrokes.