Ammunition for the Republican War on Science 0

Jen McCreight, grad student and aspiring biologist, thinks she has found part of the reason that scientific information is poorly received. Scientists can’t write, and the conventions of scientific literature accentuate their inability to write:

Most scientists are terrible writers.

And when I say terrible writers, I’m not just talking about English skills – though that certainly is a problem. When I had to read some of my classmates’ papers in undergrad, I was often thankful to find a sentence that wasn’t a fragment or a run-on. I don’t have perfect grammar, especially when informally blogging, but I can usually get general concepts across. And don’t even get me started on the organization of some papers. Your methods are where?

But most science writing is simply impenetrable. Everything seems to be lingo and jargon, to the point where they might as well be speaking another language. This problem gets worse with time, since fields are becoming more specialized, not less.

I think she has a point. Much academic writing is execrable.

I once had a boss who had recently earned a doctorate in an education-related field (not teaching or guidance–he was in business, not in the school system; it was in ed. psych., instructional design, or something like that).

He told me that, when his advisor read the draft of his dissertation, his advisor told him to rewrite it.

He said, “Why? I think it’s very well-written.”

The advisor said, “It’s too well-written. It’s too clear. The sentences are too short. The language is too straightforward. Go back and replace the sort words with long ones.”

Thirty additional pages later, his advisor told him the dissertation was ready to be submitted to the examining committee.