Man, all the reports and proposals I've written (hundreds, I think), and journal articles (must be a whopping half dozen of those)... 

It strives for a horrible sort of uniform, informative blandness, making arguments without stylistic distractions.  If there's a creative end to that drear, I think it does work one toward discipline.  Learning to organize thoughts, to be aware of what you're saying, and to grow a willingness to excise the unnecessary crap is all most people need to learn from writing.  It's a necessary condition to writing well, as they say, but not a sufficient one.  (I've seen similar arguments about journalism.) 

But you know, even in the sciences, good writing better gets across the quality of the work.  (And there's usually a correlation between the communications skills and the studies.)  When I was doing my post-doc, my colleague suggested I write the first papers, because I (who he fancied the naif), unlike himself (who he fancied some beetlebrowed academic heavyweight) could best get across the gosh-wow newness of what we were doing.  He was a special kind of asshole, but I have to admit he wasn't on the wrong track.  One of the lessons I've learned from you too John, is to embrace and refine the voice(s) that I have at my command.