Why are Scientific papers nowadays written in a convoluted and pretentious way?

[MrOmnos]

I am a newbie and I have not read many papers but those I have read have really put me off. There seems be a race going on to come up with coolest and complex looking titles. They use terms that can be easily replaced with simpler terms ( I am not talking about the scientific terms). I mean what the hell? I feel like these are the people that are trying too hard to impress. If you are one of those, please stop!!

 There was a paper I read a while back on Quantum Illumination and the damn thing was so well written, it was like reading a really interesting story. I mean have you read Einstein's papers. The titles are so elegantly put together and the papers are like reading a Novel. (I think they were translated but still)

May be I am just stupid don't understand the stuff but this is what I feel. Do you agree or disagree, please post your opinions.

[Kleinstein]

Sometimes it is translations that causes silly sounding language / titles.

For the US there is the tendency to make 5 papers with essentially the same contend - so they must have at least a different sounding title.

Also the use of search engines makes it sometimes better to have a longer title with more catch words - just to make sure they are easier to find. Silly - but search engine optimization is not limited to google. 

[jpanhalt]

I'm sure that leveraging the input of all affected stakeholders we can achieve a targeted outcome, going forward.

Make that "data based, targeted outcome,..." and you will have sufficiently described the nature of the paper to enable learners to achieve maximum benefit efficiency.

John

[AutomationGuy]

When I studied computer science most paper turned out to be useless for me. There is so many useless documents in computer science that you just can learn to be more critical on science.
I learned to do my own investigations where ever possible. I am sure if someone would waste time on meta investigations on science papers he could prove lots of them are trash.
That might change in future becorse nower days there is more experience in computer science than in the beginning where computers came up.
But now its proven for me some scientists don't hesitate to puplish trash.

[CatalinaWOW]

It is the same here as every where else.  You get what you asked for.   You say that to get a faculty position, or retain such a position, or to get tenure you must publish.  Preferably multiple times a year.   When you score quantity, quality is likely to suffer.

Be careful what you measure, because if people are involved they will be quite clever in delivering what you ask for.

[hans]

Science is a competitive field as well. Researchers want to progress their career, recognition and funding as well. Titles should remain factual IMO and maybe highlight one remarkable fact from the invention or discovery. Titles should afterall catch the readers attention, because there is a lot of papers being published every month. It's almost unfeasible to go through them all.

I don't see anything wrong with the high usage of jargon in papers. The audience for a paper are research colleagues from similar faculties anyway. 1 excellent way on cutting down on technical documents is 1) Not to repeat yourself. 2) Not to repeat others. Just reference a book. If the reader is not up-to-date on the material at hand, how much (in general) is the 'constructive criticism' worth he/she is able to provide?


That indeed does exclude the content from a lot of people, but think of it this way: if you would give the datasheet of a modern microcontroller to any non-technical person, they would probably throw up from the amount of technical jargon in it. I think the only thing they will recognize is "Ethernet" (does it also have wifi?), "USB", "Volt" and maybe "Ohm".

However, there is a lot of BS research being done today. Data crunching and 'benchmarking' of e.g. population research is an art, because it's reasonably easy to shape results in the way you want them to be. At this point you can go wild in the number of 'discoveries' you have made, as long as the statistical numbers reach some predetermined threshold that should validate the accuracy of the data set.

[mtdoc]

I'm sure that leveraging the input of all affected stakeholders we can achieve a targeted outcome, going forward.

When was the last time you heard "going forward" used in a sentence that would have been undiminished without it there at all?

I think it is like corporate weasel speak, and is intended to differentiate the speaker or writer from non-members of the group involved. If you speak or write in a manner accessible to the audience, you are trying to include them, and make your meaning apparent. If you want to sound self important, you tend to use jargon.

That example is certainly "corporate weasel speak".  But I'm not sure that's what the OP had in mind. That kind of stuff certainly has no place in a scientific paper.

Scientific journal articles are certainly full of jargon that may sound "convoluted and pretentious" to someone not familiar with the research being described.  I certainly had that reaction before I first became immersed enough in a field to understand the jargon.  If I look at a paper outside of a field I'm familiar with, it still can feel that way.

A *GOOD* research article should be written in language that is technical and specific enough so that it accurately, precisely and efficiently conveys the intended meaning to knowledgeable peers. Of course a poorly written article may use completely unnecessary jargon.  But any good journal editor will not stand for that type of "Baffle them with bullshit" approach.

[edpalmer42]

One thing that makes technical and scientific papers sound pompous verging on silly is when the authors refer to themselves in the third person; "the authors noted that.....", or "this researcher found......" instead of just saying 'I' or 'we'.  There's a reason for that - maybe not a good reason, but at least a reason.  The idea is that the people writing the document are irrelevant.  The only thing worthwhile is the information and data so the people should be de-emphasized as much as possible.  To do otherwise is seen as arrogant.

The experiment is important, not the people who do it.  After all, the experiment isn't considered valid until someone else has repeated it and got the same results.

[Kohanbash]

I am a newbie and I have not read many papers but those I have read have really put me off. There seems be a race going on to come up with coolest and complex looking titles. They use terms that can be easily replaced with simpler terms ( I am not talking about the scientific terms). I mean what the hell? I feel like these are the people that are trying too hard to impress. If you are one of those, please stop!!

May be I am just stupid don't understand the stuff but this is what I feel. Do you agree or disagree, please post your opinions.

When I first started I had similiar sentiments as you expressed. However, now 10 years (or so) later I no longer think that way. Often (not always) there is a slight technical difference between terminology or specific words that an expert in that field would use that ends up in the title.

Example: stochastic vs random

[Marco]

When I first started I had similiar sentiments as you expressed. However, now 10 years (or so) later I no longer think that way. Often (not always) there is a slight technical difference between terminology or specific words that an expert in that field would use that ends up in the title.

Example: stochastic vs random

No functional difference, just a set of ill defined connotations and conventions. You wouldn't have to look very hard to find distinguished authors who would use random in a context where you would consider it wrong. I've done this a couple of times in discussions where pedants refuse to just go along with a discussion and feel the need to correct terminology because of a misguided idea that scientists use language very consistently, they don't ... when given the option always derive meaning from context, less likely to steer you wrong.

Of course if it's needlessly verbose word salad it becomes hard.

[Cerebus]

This is not a recent phenomenon. The truth is that most scientists and engineers just plain can't write for toffee. Aside from not paying enough attention to their English¹ teachers at school, they get their writing style from their peers, so they learn to copy the writing style of their lecturers, professors, PhD supervisors and, of course, poorly written papers from the 'literature'. Weirdly this also applies to lawyers, whose whole business is words, and yet who can't write a social letter or a magazine article without it sounding like a formal legal document.

If you want proof, just read the prose of the native English speakers on this forum. Not all, but at least half of the writers have a hard time getting their point across clearly. And here, gentle reader, we are talking about a bunch of engineers who choose to write every day on this forum, so they can't claim they're not getting enough practice.

There is no great secret to writing a paper well, good writing is good writing whatever the subject matter. Remember that you are telling a story, whether it is "What I did on My Holidays", or "An Investigation into The Behaviour of sub-10nm Transistors", it is still a story. Think about the person reading it and about what they will want to know.

Don't use a complex or unfamiliar word where a common one will do, don't use a phase where a word will do. (My personal pet hate - "at this moment in time" instead of "now".) If there are formal conventions for your field, use them - such as the typical use of "we" to describe the experimenter, even if it's just an individual - not doing so is jarring to the reader.

Keep sentences as short as fluidity will allow. Write as little as possible. By that I mean don't take three pages to say what half a page will. PhD theses are particularly prone to this disease. Someone has just spent three years of their life researching and doesn't want it to come to a mere 10,000 words. Furthermore they are encouraged to write at length even when a briefer document, perhaps with some appendices, would serve everybody better.

Professional tip: If you are writing anything that even vaguely qualifies as 'news', once you have written it delete the first paragraph. Does it still make sense? If it does, leave it; if it doesn't, OK, you can put the first paragraph back. You'd be surprised how often this works.

Learn to accept constructive criticism of your writing and get feedback. I've been a professional writer, a tech journalist and magazine section editor. In the magazine world you have sub-editors who take what you've written, clean up the grammar and spelling if it needs cleaning up, put things into house style and, most importantly, clean up any awkward or ambiguous phrasing. They are a god-send and every professional writer worth their salt gets to love good sub-editors - even if they do cut your jokes.

I find that it is amateur writers who think that their work is precious and get upset the minute a sub or an editor changes something. The latter may go some way to explaining why there are so many badly written papers out there. The journal editors probably start out their careers trying to actively edit papers for clarity. Then they run into many prima donnas who throw a fit that their precious words have been changed. Eventually they give up and follow the path of least resistance and stop actually editing and instead become managing editors.

Writer A: "What does a managing editor do?"
Writer B: "Dunno. If you ever find out, tell me"

1 Or whatever their native language is.

[jonovid]

my one and only comment here!

welcome to the world of junk education, just as you have junk food, that looks the part but fails.
with education for profit. the quality of the knowledge can be poor even if the written work is a literary masterpiece.

[JPortici]

This is not a recent phenomenon. The truth is that most scientists and engineers just plain can't write for toffee.

[...]

If you want proof, just read the prose of the native English speakers on this forum. Not all, but at least half of the writers have a hard time getting their point across clearly. And here, gentle reader, [...]

  92 minutes of applause

This, 100%. The whole post actually.
Until a specific moment in my young life i've always neglected reading and writing, a burden that i'm still carrying: every time i read a post from certain users i tell myself HOW do they do it? WHY is it so clear, so simple? WHY would i have needed double the words.. or more?. Needless to say, the answer, i already know it. Reading a lot helps a lot and trying to write a lot helps a lot. One of my personal and professional heroes is jim williams (of course) but not as an engineer as much as a technical writer. I'd say i want to become at least as good as him at writing articles

[ivaylo]

Forget convoluted and pretentious, why do I have to pay $20 a pop to read one even if the research was done with public money is my biggest beaf with these...

[woodchips]

I empathise and sympathise.

I became interested in electromagnetism so started reading up about it. I discovered that any book newer than about 1965 simply wasn't worth bothering with. Why? Because around then they changed from explaining how it worked to using advanced maths, became rubbish. Go and read people like Scroggie or Steinmetz from the 1920's and 1930's for a real read.

I subscribed to various proceedings when I belonged to the IEE. In 10 or so years I found one article I understood and was useful. Waste of paper.

[John Coloccia]

There's a program floating around somewhere that takes a topic as input, and it outputs a nonsense "paper", complete with confusing jargon, strange sentence structure etc. It would be nothing but a silly curiosity if someone hadn't managed to actually get some of these papers accepted and published. If I have a minute, I'll try and dig up a link.

edit:
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/#examples

That's one of them, at least. I think there are more.

Anyhow, I have to agree. Because of some work I did years ago, I had to go through some scientific literature. I had to sit there and read every sentence, over and over again, until the damn thing started to make sense. I think part of it is just a simple lack of writing skills. Very annoying, especially when you finally translate the sentence and it ends up meaning, "If you shake it too hard, it breaks."

I have the same problem reading news stories. It used to be that journalists wrote simply and clearly. Now, I have to keep reading sentences over and over again. They do weird things like change people's names every sentence. For example, if someone is named "John Smith", in one sentence they'll call him "John Smith"...and another sentence he'll be called "Smith"...and in another one, he'll be called "John"...and in another one they'll call him "the plaintiff"...and if there's a wife involved, they'll call him "her husband". Not a big deal with just one person involved, but when there are multiple people involved, you can get whiplash scanning back and forth trying to figure out who the heck they're talking about. Now add in similar nonsense with other parts of the story and I start to wonder to myself if they aren't trying to confuse me on purpose so my attention will drift and I'll click on an advertisement just to escape.

[station240]

Security through Obfuscation.
In this case Job Security.
Either because they are professional academics, or so any company wishing to implement their ideas has to hire them to decode the papers. 

[AlfBaz]

Oh, for a minute there I thought we were talking about the masturbatory web site, otherwise known as Wikipedia  

"Look at me, look at me, I know LaTeX and did pure math at uni for 20 years to explain why a ball bounces"

[Len]

"Scientific language is becoming more informal" - a recent editorial in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-language-is-becoming-more-informal-1.20963

[mtdoc]

"Scientific language is becoming more informal" - a recent editorial in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-language-is-becoming-more-informal-1.20963

That is an interesting editorial  I find that interesting!

Thanks for the link.

[hans]

Forget convoluted and pretentious, why do I have to pay $20 a pop to read one even if the research was done with public money is my biggest beaf with these...

Because: http://sci-hub.io/

[mtdoc]

Because: http://sci-hub.io/

Awesome!

[Kohanbash]

Forget convoluted and pretentious, why do I have to pay $20 a pop to read one even if the research was done with public money is my biggest beaf with these...

Don't forget the authors also usually pay to have the papers published.

------------------

Unsuccessfully I have tried a few times to get people to publish academic papers to my Robotics site. The idea is that it would be free and easy to find by others. With my model I wanted to get papers double blind peer reviewed and have the reviewers names listed with the paper. This gives people a sense of who reviewed it, and would make reviewers want to protect there reputation more.

[mtdoc]

Don't forget the authors also usually pay to have the papers published.

No. Not true. At least not in the basic sciences and not any reputable journal. Unless something has changed in the last few years - which I doubt.

Basic science research itself is mostly publicly funded but the journals are not. They are mostly published by for profit scientific publishing houses. That is why one must usually pay for online access to full articles. Of course any decent University library will subscribe to all major journals and have interlibrary access to others. They will provide free access to students, faculty and staff.

[julian1]

There's a similar tendency toward convoluted complexity in some programming languages/environments,

http://java.metagno.me/