3 ms·
> it’s not compatible with technical writing and will likely get the paper rejected if it is done there Something seems to be going wrong there if easy to unde
by billytetrud 5y ago
> it’s not compatible with technical writing and will likely get the paper rejected if it is done there
Something seems to be going wrong there if easy to understand writing is rejected by papers.
> Journalists should consult with experts not unlike any layman consulting a lawyer for legal advice.
That's pretty gate-keepery. Also, it clearly hasn't been working. Having to consult a laywer for legal advice is a consequence of our extraordinarily and unnecessarily complex code of law and court system. Its not a good thing. Consulting experts just isn't feasible for most people. Its not a good state of things IMO.
- mirker 5y agoYou need to provide an example of a highly cited paper with low clarity otherwise the clarity concept is vague. Even if it is true that papers are unclear, the incentives for academics is to get prestige, which follows from getting papers accepted, which follows from getting (usually) 3 experts to say their paper is the least terrible paper in their stack. Professors need 30-40 papers in 5-6 years so journalists reading their paper for a 2 minute story is probably not on their radar. The process for getting a paper accepted is tuned precisely to be understood by the 3 reviewers, and further synthesis is out of scope. Basically, it is incorrect to view papers as a way to spread knowledge to the masses (this is a common stance taken by science), but they are rather a form of academic currency which can be converted into other digestible forms, such as books. Often the knowledge in the paper is not even yet broadly accepted and may even be unsafe/incorrect e.g., medical research. So yes, consult with experts.