4 ms·

scientific papers and general blog posts have completely different audiences and intentions. The purpose of a paper is to be rigorous and exact and move the fi

by jtmcmc 9y ago

scientific papers and general blog posts have completely different audiences and intentions. The purpose of a paper is to be rigorous and exact and move the field of study forward. That tends to make them dense and use the fields jargon - which is short hand for massive amounts of information.

Fordrus 9y ago
While this is partially true, it is also DEFINITELY true that there is a large amount of academic posturing going on in the field of Molecular Biology, at least. I've read MANY papers that could've been both more exactly and more simply written if they'd avoided needless jargon. Yet my own experience with it indicates that they probably had to put in the jargon in order to get published- so much so that they may have been required to do a re-write or two to insert more 'academic language' to get accepted. Quite annoying.
- civilitty 9y ago
  Academic posturing is a superficial criticism, at least in the life sciences. I've spent far more time trying to replicate intermediate protocols in peer reviewed papers than I've spent trying to understand their data and conclusions. If it weren't for ambitious undergrads and PhD candidates, I'd spend most of my time identifying why one manufacturer's reagents failed but another's didn't than actually doing research or writing grants. The problem isn't the jargon itself, it's the fact that most labs have built up decades of institutional knowledge that they hoard for fear of their research being "scooped." I'm just thankful I don't work in downstream medical research anymore, where the number of replicable papers goes from one in two to one in ten, at best.
  - lbeltrame 9y ago
    > The problem isn't the jargon itself, it's the fact that most labs have built up decades of institutional knowledge that they hoard for fear of their research being "scooped." Unfortunately it's the same for software and algorithms (at least in bioinformatics, which is my field). Everything is treated like closely guarded secrets, at least in the smaller environments. Thankfully the tendency is slowly being reversed and there are even things developed out in the open: the "problem" with those is that being in the open, it's harder to get publications out.
  - Fordrus 9y ago
    I agree the the posturing is not the essence of the infection, and didn't mean to communicate that. It does make wading through papers substantially more difficult, however, and that is a sincere and severe annoyance, though the tendency to hoard knowledge for fear of being scooped is a greater one. Your comment about reagents from one manufacturer failing while another succeeded brings back fond memories of trying to make our own botulinum neurotoxin to study neurons- and the rest about hoarding institutional knowledge reminds me why I tried to get out of that. I was one of those ambitious undergrads, but I permitted myself to wilt under the insanity of a system in which I KNEW that a partnered laboratory knew exactly what to do, but they were forbidden to share the knowledge because of politics. By the time I had cut through the wasteful uselessness, I discovered that the only sane person there, one who had been willing to share knowledge, she had actually DIED. And so I merrily skipped over to the bioinformatics department, which has issues as well but in which I was able to manage them fairly effectively. :D
adrianratnapala 9y ago
Yep even well written papers will be dense and jargonistic for laymen -- and it is childish to expect everything to be well written. But imagine if the incentives of scholars somehow shift so that they look less to funding committees and more to the audiences of blogs and magazine articles. I think such a shift would do more good than harm. Scholars would still write serious papers to establish their reputation amongst each-other, but insofar as they rush to publish, I'd rather they pump out accessible blog style articles than the kind of gibberish that is made today in order to inflate the citation metrics.
- visarga 9y ago
  You might be referring to a different field that I usually read, but "the kind of gibberish" that is in papers is much more clear and exact than blog-style hand wavy explanations.

by jtmcmc 9y ago

Fordrus 9y ago

While this is partially true, it is also DEFINITELY true that there is a large amount of academic posturing going on in the field of Molecular Biology, at least. I've read MANY papers that could've been both more exactly and more simply written if they'd avoided needless jargon. Yet my own experience with it indicates that they probably had to put in the jargon in order to get published- so much so that they may have been required to do a re-write or two to insert more 'academic language' to get accepted. Quite annoying.

civilitty 9y ago
Academic posturing is a superficial criticism, at least in the life sciences. I've spent far more time trying to replicate intermediate protocols in peer reviewed papers than I've spent trying to understand their data and conclusions. If it weren't for ambitious undergrads and PhD candidates, I'd spend most of my time identifying why one manufacturer's reagents failed but another's didn't than actually doing research or writing grants. The problem isn't the jargon itself, it's the fact that most labs have built up decades of institutional knowledge that they hoard for fear of their research being "scooped." I'm just thankful I don't work in downstream medical research anymore, where the number of replicable papers goes from one in two to one in ten, at best.
- lbeltrame 9y ago
  > The problem isn't the jargon itself, it's the fact that most labs have built up decades of institutional knowledge that they hoard for fear of their research being "scooped." Unfortunately it's the same for software and algorithms (at least in bioinformatics, which is my field). Everything is treated like closely guarded secrets, at least in the smaller environments. Thankfully the tendency is slowly being reversed and there are even things developed out in the open: the "problem" with those is that being in the open, it's harder to get publications out.
- Fordrus 9y ago
  I agree the the posturing is not the essence of the infection, and didn't mean to communicate that. It does make wading through papers substantially more difficult, however, and that is a sincere and severe annoyance, though the tendency to hoard knowledge for fear of being scooped is a greater one. Your comment about reagents from one manufacturer failing while another succeeded brings back fond memories of trying to make our own botulinum neurotoxin to study neurons- and the rest about hoarding institutional knowledge reminds me why I tried to get out of that. I was one of those ambitious undergrads, but I permitted myself to wilt under the insanity of a system in which I KNEW that a partnered laboratory knew exactly what to do, but they were forbidden to share the knowledge because of politics. By the time I had cut through the wasteful uselessness, I discovered that the only sane person there, one who had been willing to share knowledge, she had actually DIED. And so I merrily skipped over to the bioinformatics department, which has issues as well but in which I was able to manage them fairly effectively. :D

adrianratnapala 9y ago

Yep even well written papers will be dense and jargonistic for laymen -- and it is childish to expect everything to be well written. But imagine if the incentives of scholars somehow shift so that they look less to funding committees and more to the audiences of blogs and magazine articles. I think such a shift would do more good than harm. Scholars would still write serious papers to establish their reputation amongst each-other, but insofar as they rush to publish, I'd rather they pump out accessible blog style articles than the kind of gibberish that is made today in order to inflate the citation metrics.

visarga 9y ago
You might be referring to a different field that I usually read, but "the kind of gibberish" that is in papers is much more clear and exact than blog-style hand wavy explanations.