3 ms·
The space on posters is extremely limited. You condense several person-months into a few sentences and graphics, usually fewer words than OP used. At the same
by cedilla 5y ago
The space on posters is extremely limited. You condense several person-months into a few sentences and graphics, usually fewer words than OP used.
At the same time, the research is usually very narrow. It's hard but possible to convey a general concept in few words, but if you study the properties of a subclass of a subclass of a subclass of a subclass of organic chemicals, you simply have to use terms of art. You don't have the space to explain what a ligand is, or what paramagnetism is, and you don't need to anyway, because your audience likely understands the concepts better than you do.
- gonehome 5y agoI think that makes total sense for a poster. It's when talking to people that I've noticed a difference. Some people have the jargon, but I can ask questions and learn from them because they can explain the underlying ideas. Some just hide behind the jargon and can't answer questions - often in the latter the impression I get is that their actual knowledge is pretty shallow. It's not always the case (sometimes people are just bad at communication in general), but it's the case often enough that it's a signal. It's also something I've noticed more in academia for whatever reason. My off the cuff guess is that both some cultural pressure towards signaling intelligence and prestige is coupled with being hard to understand, and that it's easier to hide with bullshit in academia than in industry. Not that you can't hide in industry too, but entire fields of academia that were total bullshit sometimes perpetuate for decades - companies typically die earlier than that.