6 ms·

Not sure that's true... It takes a lot of effort to translate text into concise science speak ("I'd have written a shorter letter if only I had more time"). Th

• the_duke 10y ago
  Domain specific language and formalisms exist for a reason. They enable efficient communication for people who know the field. Scientific papers are not written for the layman with an interest, but to communicate the results of your research to others in the field. Admittedly a lot of papers are also just written to keep your University from giving your job to someone else. But publish or perish is another issue. I agree that there should be more scientists writing articles / blogs that make their research approachable and engaging for the layman, but that does not extend to papers, in my opinion.
  • Arnt 10y ago
    Or, perhaps: They enable grants. I've only ever helped write a single grant application. My parts of that had to be rewritten with more use of passive verbs and general neutral-sounding but largely vacuous prose. I thought it's like those chick jokes. You don't offer comments about random women's gorgeous breasts because you really want to, it's just expected in some contexts. It tells the audience you're one of the guys. Overlong sentences where all that's done is passively done inform the grant reviewers that the author a proper scientist who should be enabled to continue with valuable research.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]