coming up with new ideas and expressing them to others requires new vocabulary. You can’t simply say things in “plain English” especially when you want to communicate with peers.
This is why academia is so often refereed to as a discipline; you must train yourself in new ways of thinking. Making it accessible to the layperson is the job of scientific communicators, not scientists at large.
And it’s not like this is a unique issue with acedemia, every organization I’ve ever participated in had special vocabulary if it was necessary or not.
Many professionals (not only scientists) are really bad at crafting sentences and texts, even without jargon.
I get jargon, but even if you replace all of the jargon in a typical paper with simple words, the writing style is often horrible. It’s often weirdly repetitive, has fluff-pieces and empty phrases, and just doesn’t get to the point. (I’ll ignore the inherent worthlessness of many articles here, since this is a symptom of funding policy)
I don’t expect a scientific article to be understandable for someone outside the field, but do yourself the disfavour and ask a random scientist, what it is they’re actually doing and to explain it in simple terms. Most can’t. And that says to me, that these people never learned (or were taught) how to actually boil a concept down to its essence. And that I think is pretty bad.
As an example, two scientists from different fields could work on almost the same problem from different angles, but they would never know that if they talked to each other, because they are unable to express their work in a way the other person can understand.
I don’t expect a scientific article to be understandable for someone outside the field, but do yourself the disfavour and ask a random scientist, what it is they’re actually doing and to explain it in simple terms. Most can’t. And that says to me, that these people never learned (or were taught) how to actually boil a concept down to its essence. And that I think is pretty bad.
As an example, two scientists from different fields could work on almost the same problem from different angles, but they would never know that if they talked to each other, because they are unable to express their work in a way the other person can understand.
This is why I believe scientists should be required to take liberal arts classes; especially related to written and spoken language. Trying to read a scientific paper as an outsider is painfully hard because you’re trying to understand what the Big Words are trying to say, but then the paper also takes a borderline meandering path that loops back on itself or has sections that mean nothing, leaving you (or at least, me) confused. Like, c’mon man, I’m trying to understand what you’re saying, but your narrative is more convoluted than House of Leaves.
How can you expect to truly make a breakthrough in science if you struggle to accurately and precisely convey your ideas to your peers? Study the great writers so your papers can have great writing and results.
If it helps, try doing it from a scientific perspective - as if you’re studying a brand new creature or property of physics - and make notes on things like,
How the author expresses their ideas.
Was the author easily understandable?
What, if anything, made it easier or harder for you to understand what was written?
What elements made the writing more precise, concise and/or accurate to what the author was trying to convey (using outside sources)?
…and so forth.
(And yes, I also think liberal arts students should be required to take some level of hard STEM classes (not watered-down “libarts-compatible” stuff, but actual physics, chemistry, biology, etc) as well.)
Edit: you might even end up with a reputation for being more intelligent than you actually are, simply because you’re able to convey your ideas significantly better than your peers.
Edit 2: or alternatively, study a programming language until you’re decent at it, and then write your papers as if you’re trying to explain them to a computer.
In defense of jargon:
coming up with new ideas and expressing them to others requires new vocabulary. You can’t simply say things in “plain English” especially when you want to communicate with peers.
This is why academia is so often refereed to as a discipline; you must train yourself in new ways of thinking. Making it accessible to the layperson is the job of scientific communicators, not scientists at large.
And it’s not like this is a unique issue with acedemia, every organization I’ve ever participated in had special vocabulary if it was necessary or not.
Jargon is only legitimate when it clarifies more than plain English. If it does, fine, use it.
Many professionals (not only scientists) are really bad at crafting sentences and texts, even without jargon.
I get jargon, but even if you replace all of the jargon in a typical paper with simple words, the writing style is often horrible. It’s often weirdly repetitive, has fluff-pieces and empty phrases, and just doesn’t get to the point. (I’ll ignore the inherent worthlessness of many articles here, since this is a symptom of funding policy)
I don’t expect a scientific article to be understandable for someone outside the field, but do yourself the disfavour and ask a random scientist, what it is they’re actually doing and to explain it in simple terms. Most can’t. And that says to me, that these people never learned (or were taught) how to actually boil a concept down to its essence. And that I think is pretty bad.
As an example, two scientists from different fields could work on almost the same problem from different angles, but they would never know that if they talked to each other, because they are unable to express their work in a way the other person can understand.
This is why I believe scientists should be required to take liberal arts classes; especially related to written and spoken language. Trying to read a scientific paper as an outsider is painfully hard because you’re trying to understand what the Big Words are trying to say, but then the paper also takes a borderline meandering path that loops back on itself or has sections that mean nothing, leaving you (or at least, me) confused. Like, c’mon man, I’m trying to understand what you’re saying, but your narrative is more convoluted than House of Leaves.
How can you expect to truly make a breakthrough in science if you struggle to accurately and precisely convey your ideas to your peers? Study the great writers so your papers can have great writing and results.
If it helps, try doing it from a scientific perspective - as if you’re studying a brand new creature or property of physics - and make notes on things like,
How the author expresses their ideas.
Was the author easily understandable?
What, if anything, made it easier or harder for you to understand what was written?
What elements made the writing more precise, concise and/or accurate to what the author was trying to convey (using outside sources)?
…and so forth.
(And yes, I also think liberal arts students should be required to take some level of hard STEM classes (not watered-down “libarts-compatible” stuff, but actual physics, chemistry, biology, etc) as well.)
Edit: you might even end up with a reputation for being more intelligent than you actually are, simply because you’re able to convey your ideas significantly better than your peers.
Edit 2: or alternatively, study a programming language until you’re decent at it, and then write your papers as if you’re trying to explain them to a computer.