In my experience, younger PIs and the field I work in in general is moving away from the passive voice. While your experience seems to be that passive voice is

In my experience, younger PIs and the field I work in in general is moving away from the passive voice. While your experience seems to be that passive voice is clearer, from my perspective it is clunky and inelegant. I disagree that 1st person voice results in flowery prose. Bad writing remains bad independent of passive or first person style. It can be much clearer and, well, direct to use first person voice ("To assess wether the effect data X suggests holds true when Y, we do Z1, Z2, and Z3 as they cover Y1, Y2, Y3". This is clean and clear and much nicer than the respective passive voice. But again, perhaps just my opinion.