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I really don't think it is necessary to bring in deliberate obfuscation as an explanation. The fact is that writing clearly is hard. It takes work. And tenure/p

I really don't think it is necessary to bring in deliberate obfuscation as an explanation. The fact is that writing clearly is hard. It takes work. And tenure/promotion/etc. decisions are often made on output, not on clarity. So, say I'm a researcher. I've written a paper. It's a mess. I can put some more time into it, rewriting it to be more understandable, or I can use that time to do research & writing for another paper. In the former case, I get one clear paper; in the latter, I get two unclear ones. The people on my tenure committee are going to read my publications list, but not the papers themselves. Which scenario makes me look better to them?

nathanmarz 17y ago
My post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek :) The main point is that the incentive is there to wrap uninteresting research in terminology and complexity - so if the incentive is there, you wonder if anyone does it deliberately. I've read a lot of papers which were difficult to grok but ended up being remarkably simple.
- neilc 17y ago
  Another factor is that reviewers are sometimes inclined to reject papers that are too straightforward: if the final result is so simple, is the work really novel or interesting?
- Groxx 17y ago
  I've seen the same a lot of times, and I wonder if it's how many textbook companies work. I've read a couple wonderful textbooks, but they are definitely the exception rather than the rule. Typically, the more complicated the language, the less is being said. Ever read legal documents?
f_sav 17y ago
Also, having read a few (first year grad student here), I'm starting to think it might sometimes be a simple matter of lack of space. Explaining algorithm and method correctly requires examples, precisions etc. which might take away space to pack in more results and experiments. (I know some conferences have submission guidelines with page limits) There might be "shadier" reasons, but if that explanation makes sense, I for one would like it a lot if some researchers got in the habit of having longer explanations somewhere, say on their website. I don't know if that'd somehow break implicit rules in the academic field, but it'd lead to less head-banging-in-the-wall-trying-to-understand-what-that-damn-symbol-means.
- RK 17y ago
  The top physics journal is Physical Review Letters, which restricts submissions to 4 pages. That presents a number of difficulties in presenting results, especially if you need to include a lot of plots/graphics/tables. If you are publishing the result of research that took years and dozens or hundreds of people, things must be greatly condensed. It's not Scientific American.

nathanmarz 17y ago

My post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek :) The main point is that the incentive is there to wrap uninteresting research in terminology and complexity - so if the incentive is there, you wonder if anyone does it deliberately. I've read a lot of papers which were difficult to grok but ended up being remarkably simple.

neilc 17y ago
Another factor is that reviewers are sometimes inclined to reject papers that are too straightforward: if the final result is so simple, is the work really novel or interesting?
Groxx 17y ago
I've seen the same a lot of times, and I wonder if it's how many textbook companies work. I've read a couple wonderful textbooks, but they are definitely the exception rather than the rule. Typically, the more complicated the language, the less is being said. Ever read legal documents?

f_sav 17y ago

Also, having read a few (first year grad student here), I'm starting to think it might sometimes be a simple matter of lack of space. Explaining algorithm and method correctly requires examples, precisions etc. which might take away space to pack in more results and experiments. (I know some conferences have submission guidelines with page limits) There might be "shadier" reasons, but if that explanation makes sense, I for one would like it a lot if some researchers got in the habit of having longer explanations somewhere, say on their website. I don't know if that'd somehow break implicit rules in the academic field, but it'd lead to less head-banging-in-the-wall-trying-to-understand-what-that-damn-symbol-means.

RK 17y ago
The top physics journal is Physical Review Letters, which restricts submissions to 4 pages. That presents a number of difficulties in presenting results, especially if you need to include a lot of plots/graphics/tables. If you are publishing the result of research that took years and dozens or hundreds of people, things must be greatly condensed. It's not Scientific American.