When I was in undergrad, during my methodology class, my professor (and advisor) was asked, “How do you keep your journal articles jargon-free?” and his answer was, “After a certain level, you simply cannot, and to do so would actually make your writing bad historical writing.” He then went on to compare two different articles by the same author written in a journal where undergraduates can submit, and a journal where only phd. can submit.
The difference in language was subtle but noticeable, because there is an implicit understanding that the article is written for someone who has the necessary background on the subject. The writer was able to not have to explain every concept in a journal for phd., since the readers were supposed to bring a baseline of knowledge, or know how and where to go to be educated (or who to ask). This is despite the fact that both were available via jstor.
There will always be people having conversations about things that are beyond your understandig on the topic. I do not instantly understand nuclear physics or computer science or organic chemistry, but I give credentialed people that I know aren’t cranks the benefit of doubt that they know what’s going on. This respect is often not extended to humanities people talking about their work because “blue curtain is just blue” people think the high school education they mostly rejected puts them on the same field of discussion as people educated on the subject. Yet, these are the people who get mad when they find that rudely interjecting into a conversation where everyone else is on the same page and saying understanding the conversation is too hard in an extremely hostile manner gets a answered with hostility.
The bottom line is, you aren’t entitled to understanding everything you come across instantly. If you do not understand the conversation, it is your job to either get educated on the subject if it seems interesting enough, or move on if it seems incomprehensible and is not something you’d care about. If you enter a conversation you are not ready for, that is on you, not people bewildered at your antics.
Specifically, I’m talking about people like this that leave dumb comments on any posts on complex issues that have words with more than 3 syllables.
It is absolutely a form of anti-intellectualism to say that all things should be understood to all people inherently or that conversations should be simplified until this is true. Sometimes, you are the one that needs to read a book until you understand. There is nothing wrong with being uneducated on complex subjects, but to then reject complexity since you did not instantly understand it is dangerous and only help people who seeks to undermine nuances in complex issues.
I get what your saying but no it actually isn’t anti intellectual if poor and disabled people can’t read the same thing you hand in for a grade in post grad I fucking hate this place
Someone’s postgrad research essay is not meant to be scicomm. Scicomm is a field in and of itself, meant to make complicated subjects accessible to laymen, but often postgrad research cannot be interchangeable with popular science writing and still be useful. If you want to learn about, say, the biochemistry of allelopathy in walnut trees but don’t have any background in chemistry or ecology, a PhD’s essay in a scientific journal just isn’t the place to start.
The key is making the foundational education accessible and affordable and in expanding scicomm as a field. Scientific terminology isn’t something we can just do away with, and not all scientists have any skill at scicomm.
I think the link people are missing is that it’s okay to not understand things you’re not an expert in, that’s why we have experts, but education should be accessible and you should pursue it if you want to understand a complex subject.
It’s not that researchers think you can get to their level easily with a busy life, but that you should have access to information if you want to know more, because swapping out jargon for everyday words can cloud meaning.
And by access to education I not only mean schooling, but also books, articles, time, and money. Nothing should restrict your access to knowledge.
So yes, experts should use appropriate terminology, and if you’re curious your should look into that, but the hurdle is often inaccessible education and that’s neither groups fault.
Scientific communication is so important but academic papers aren’t the place for it. New discoveries are made because of past advancements. You can’t expect an academic paper to explain all of the past advancements and knowledge that led up to its particular findings.
Take mRNA vaccines for example. If every research paper about them included background info on how viruses work, how mRNA works, how immune systems work, etc, the resulting paper would be incredible long and a waste of time and resources. The point of an academic paper is to summarize a novel discovery with a level of detail that allows scrutiny and replication by other experts.
Instead, dissemination to the public happens through the news, PSAs, infographics, etc. (side note: that tiktok about fork hands? Amazing SciComm.) Unlike academics, lay-people don’t need to know every minute intricacy of how mRNA vaccines work.
Unfortunately, not all science is disseminated equally. COVID-19 info has been widely publicized due to public health concerns, of course. But other subjects are less accessible without up-to-date or advanced education. And certain topics (climate change in particular, but also evolution, sexuality, and economics) have been politicized to a degree where they are treated as opinions by major news organizations. And that’s partially because there are people with lots of money who want it to be treated that way. But that’s another topic for another day
When I was writing morphological species descriptions and a taxonomic key for Carcinops beetles, I found the highly-specific terminology frustrating. Things like “stria of the lateral disc of the first abdominal ventrite.”
I get that this language exists for a reason, but it’s so inaccessible to people unless they are familiar with not only a particular insect family, but often a particular order as well (The go-to guidebooks for these terms don’t always have illustrations, either.) In fact, at the time, I had recently received hundreds of Carcinops spp that had already been identified to species level for another paper, including a new species, only to find out that, not only was there not a new species – all of the species IDs were wrong! And they had been IDed by a Histerid expert who had followed an accurately-written identification key! So if an expert in the order that my beetles belonged to couldn’t follow a taxonomic key, other taxonomists – academic or hobbyist – were screwed!
So I ended up drawing an illustrated guide to Carcinops and included it in the manuscript.
I crudely drew it in MS Paint and I believe that it singlehandedly made my paper 10 times more accessible.
ifesbob 