3 ms·

That sounds intriguing, although it strikes me that you might have been observing a survivorship bias. Older papers that are considered notable today would pro

That sounds intriguing, although it strikes me that you might have been observing a survivorship bias. Older papers that are considered notable today would probably be well-written compared to a random paper published last year, even if there weren't any group-level differences. To be fair, given that the papers-published-per-scientist-per-year metric has been increasing (somewhat unhealthily, so it seems), I wouldn't be surprised if there has been at least some decrease in writing quality, simply to due to less time spent editing and polishing.

suchire 7y ago
It’s definitely possible, but I think there’s still a palpable difference today. As an example, this work from 1989 on how telomeres work was awarded a Nobel in 2016. It’s not unreadable, but it has a completely different (and I would say worse) style compared to the Crick paper I linked earlier: https://moscow.sci-hub.tw/1036/810d9cdd2ea2e1a07d887dc432061543/greider1989.pdf https://moscow.sci-hub.tw/1036/810d9cdd2ea2e1a07d887dc432061... It’s also interesting how formats have evolved. Older journals like Nature and Science used to have a “letters” section--essentially letters to the editor. They were brief (200-300 words) and started with “Dear sirs”, like an actual letter. Today, a “letter” in the same journals is essentially a whole (short, 2-3 page) paper, like this one: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1578-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1578-4