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Unfortunately, the 'lay' audience is often not all that 'lay.' For example, you might be working on a phd in an adjacent field to a given paper and still have

Unfortunately, the 'lay' audience is often not all that 'lay.' For example, you might be working on a phd in an adjacent field to a given paper and still have a hard time coping with the sub-field-specific jargon. This happens all the time in math research, and contributes heavily to silo'ing of subfields. This silo'ing is actually super counter productive, and can lead to the same things being independently rediscovered, and important, useful discoveries simply failing to be communicated across silo boundaries.

Balgair 10y ago
I'll echo this for biology too. Often, the jargon is the exact same word, but used in a very different way. A quick example is the word 'vector'. In math, a line in space, in genetics, a vector is a virus. There are many other examples, especially with proteins, where those acronyms are reused many times, sometimes inside of the same article. I was talking to a student the other day. He and I took many of the same classes in different semester in which we were assigned to read articles and then present them as part of class discussion. Typically this ends up being a talk all about the figures of the paper. He mentioned that most of the time, with bio papers, you have to read the article at least 3 times before you can start to grasp what is going on with it, not to mention the online methods section that goes on for ~20 printed pages. Often, the figures are quite clever and really do a good job at conveying the data in a great way, but they are presented as 'in-field' and the graphs, the diagrams, the data, etc. will be very very difficult to understand from a 'novice' point of view. For example, they will present the data out in a polar plot where the 360 graph is known in the field to represent only the arc of sensation out of the right 7th whisker of male mice under anesthesia. In that (contrived) example, you really have to dig about in literature to find this out and if you don't know that then you'll end up confused and really frustrated. Essentially, if you are a person that is somewhat interested in a very closely field of research, you have to spend hours upon hours trying to parse out some piddly little paper. It really is that bad. I don't know what that is, but it sure ain't 'science'. A paper in a closely related field should take you no more time to read and understand to the point of being able to tell someone else than the time it takes to eat a sandwich, a bag of chips, and drink a coffee in total.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Every obstacle is an opportunity, in this case a service to unpack papers for someone not in the field.
  - Balgair 10y ago
    Oh man, check out youtube or every other podcaster for that. Like, millions of videos of people 'talking' about papers, though they run into copyright stuff all the time too.
neutronicus 10y ago
One thing I've learned is that someone in that position should be looking at PhD theses before journal papers. They can be long enough that they function much better as introductions.
- rubidium 10y ago
  This and review articles are the only two avenues currently available. I'm glad to see the original post here making another effort to provide resources.
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  It's a sad industry that has enshrined culture that the more experienced/senior a person is, the lower quality their work is, because they have to make it artificially inaccessible to make themselves appear more elite.

Balgair 10y ago

I'll echo this for biology too. Often, the jargon is the exact same word, but used in a very different way. A quick example is the word 'vector'. In math, a line in space, in genetics, a vector is a virus. There are many other examples, especially with proteins, where those acronyms are reused many times, sometimes inside of the same article. I was talking to a student the other day. He and I took many of the same classes in different semester in which we were assigned to read articles and then present them as part of class discussion. Typically this ends up being a talk all about the figures of the paper. He mentioned that most of the time, with bio papers, you have to read the article at least 3 times before you can start to grasp what is going on with it, not to mention the online methods section that goes on for ~20 printed pages. Often, the figures are quite clever and really do a good job at conveying the data in a great way, but they are presented as 'in-field' and the graphs, the diagrams, the data, etc. will be very very difficult to understand from a 'novice' point of view. For example, they will present the data out in a polar plot where the 360 graph is known in the field to represent only the arc of sensation out of the right 7th whisker of male mice under anesthesia. In that (contrived) example, you really have to dig about in literature to find this out and if you don't know that then you'll end up confused and really frustrated. Essentially, if you are a person that is somewhat interested in a very closely field of research, you have to spend hours upon hours trying to parse out some piddly little paper. It really is that bad. I don't know what that is, but it sure ain't 'science'. A paper in a closely related field should take you no more time to read and understand to the point of being able to tell someone else than the time it takes to eat a sandwich, a bag of chips, and drink a coffee in total.

Chris2048 10y ago
Every obstacle is an opportunity, in this case a service to unpack papers for someone not in the field.
- Balgair 10y ago
  Oh man, check out youtube or every other podcaster for that. Like, millions of videos of people 'talking' about papers, though they run into copyright stuff all the time too.

neutronicus 10y ago

One thing I've learned is that someone in that position should be looking at PhD theses before journal papers. They can be long enough that they function much better as introductions.

rubidium 10y ago
This and review articles are the only two avenues currently available. I'm glad to see the original post here making another effort to provide resources.
fjdlwlv 10y ago
It's a sad industry that has enshrined culture that the more experienced/senior a person is, the lower quality their work is, because they have to make it artificially inaccessible to make themselves appear more elite.