3 ms·

I think it's important to recognize that the truly interesting and useful research papers are hard to understand, too. It's not supposed to be Harry Potter, an

by crux_ 17y ago

I think it's important to recognize that the truly interesting and useful research papers are hard to understand, too. It's not supposed to be Harry Potter, and if you don't actually sit down and work through the steps on page two, you have no right to complain that page three is hard to understand. Feynman had a nice anecdote to this effect in 'Surely you're joking'... Some of the most useful research papers I've come across have taken months for me to actually understand.

eru 17y ago
Yes, but Feynman only started with his approach after he got tired of trying to explain to journalists in easy term what he did. (Or was it so?)
- crux_ 17y ago
  Nope. Here's the anecdote, cut'n'pasted since I can't direct-link to it: > During the conference I was staying with my sister in Syracuse. I brought the paper home and said to her, "I can't understand these things that Lee and Yang are saying. It's all so complicated." > "No," she' said, "what you mean is not that you can't understand it, but that you didn't invent it. You didn't figure it out your own way, from hearing the clue. What you should do is imagine you're a student again, and take this paper upstairs, read every line of it, and check the equations. Then you'll understand it very easily." > I took her advice, and checked through the whole thing, and found it to be very obvious and simple. I had been afraid to read it, thinking it was too difficult.
  - eru 17y ago
    OK. I thought of another anecdote. The one where he gets his Nobel Price.
zbyszek 17y ago
Agreed. Most papers, even good ones, are hard to understand because the subject matter is hard. They are written with the assumption of a certain amount of prior knowledge of the field, and depending on the intended audience, very little background might be explained. Writing clearly is also remarkably difficult and not everyone can do it. I have often found that the initial exposition of a scientific concept is not the easiest. After it been been digested by the community for a while, clearer ways of explaining it might be found. Now, there are controversies like the Bogdanov papers, and even successful hoaxes like the famous Sokal paper, but I think these are exceptional, and usually reviewers _will_ say that a paper is "flat out bad" despite, or even because of obfuscation.

by crux_ 17y ago

eru 17y ago

Yes, but Feynman only started with his approach after he got tired of trying to explain to journalists in easy term what he did. (Or was it so?)

crux_ 17y ago
Nope. Here's the anecdote, cut'n'pasted since I can't direct-link to it: > During the conference I was staying with my sister in Syracuse. I brought the paper home and said to her, "I can't understand these things that Lee and Yang are saying. It's all so complicated." > "No," she' said, "what you mean is not that you can't understand it, but that you didn't invent it. You didn't figure it out your own way, from hearing the clue. What you should do is imagine you're a student again, and take this paper upstairs, read every line of it, and check the equations. Then you'll understand it very easily." > I took her advice, and checked through the whole thing, and found it to be very obvious and simple. I had been afraid to read it, thinking it was too difficult.
- eru 17y ago
  OK. I thought of another anecdote. The one where he gets his Nobel Price.

zbyszek 17y ago

Agreed. Most papers, even good ones, are hard to understand because the subject matter is hard. They are written with the assumption of a certain amount of prior knowledge of the field, and depending on the intended audience, very little background might be explained. Writing clearly is also remarkably difficult and not everyone can do it. I have often found that the initial exposition of a scientific concept is not the easiest. After it been been digested by the community for a while, clearer ways of explaining it might be found. Now, there are controversies like the Bogdanov papers, and even successful hoaxes like the famous Sokal paper, but I think these are exceptional, and usually reviewers _will_ say that a paper is "flat out bad" despite, or even because of obfuscation.