Timeline for Why do researchers sometimes use extremely complicated English sentences to convey their meaning?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 24, 2017 at 8:53 | comment | added | Jason C | @silvascientist It is trivial for others to interpret and rephrase a poor communicator's ideas in a lucid manner, certainly compared to solving the problem to begin with. It's why ideas from guys like Lars Onsager (referenced above) still managed to make it out into the wild despite being poorly communicated. Note that, reading between the lines, you and I seem agree: Good researchers can be terrible at communication. I'm countering JeffE's point above, not anything else (and to be clear, I mean JeffE, not Jeff). | |
| Feb 24, 2017 at 8:11 | comment | added | silvascientist | @JasonC I almost wanted to upvote your comment, but then you blew it by trivializing good exposition. It is not a trivial problem to rephrase complicated ideas in a lucid manner; this is precisely why many good researchers are notoriously terrible at communication. | |
| Feb 24, 2017 at 6:49 | comment | added | Jason C | @JeffE Think of it this way: If a researcher is good in their field but bad at writing, they're still a good researcher because they've essentially converted a difficult problem (which perhaps only they, as a highly skilled researcher, can solve) into merely a problem of interpreting a poorly communicated idea (which a heck of a lot more people can solve). So they've at least completed the hard part of a problem. The rest just takes somebody to trivially rephrase it. In this view, a good researcher turns a difficult problem into a different, more trivially solvable problem (bad writing). | |
| Feb 23, 2017 at 20:45 | comment | added | Ethan The Brave | Sometimes explaining deeply intricate and specific things requires deeply intricate and specific language in order to be precise. I feel this answer is lacking unless it hits on the option of sometimes the complication is necessary. | |
| Feb 22, 2017 at 10:36 | comment | added | Jeff | My point has nothing to do with whether you should be good at both research and communication, or whether it's better to be. But it's strikingly obvious to me that you can be good at one and not the other. I listed one example, and there are others. Also, just because research is written using unnecessarily complex language, like the OP asked about, doesn't mean another expert in the field can't read it. Obviously people read and understand Amartya Sen's work; he's still not a very good communicator. | |
| Feb 22, 2017 at 10:20 | comment | added | Turion | @user2338816, ever wondered why so many research journals are called "Communications in [insert field]"? Research without communication is hardly possible in most fields today. There are exceptions, but they are rare. | |
| Feb 22, 2017 at 10:19 | comment | added | Turion | There are many examples of researchers in e.g. mathematics who are so poor at explaining things that they don't get cited for their influences, and others reinvent their ideas independently later, communicate the well, and are perceived as the original inventors. The latter ones are successful researchers. | |
| Feb 22, 2017 at 2:50 | comment | added | user2338816 | @emory Easy -- keep results of your research to yourself for personal gain. Happens all the time everywhere. That's how much of business works. One consequence is industrial espionage. There is a huge amount of research that is closely held. | |
| Feb 21, 2017 at 11:49 | comment | added | emory | @user2338816 research - creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humans, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications. How are you going to increase the stock of knowlege without communicating with others? | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 23:13 | comment | added | gnasher729 | @Szabolcs: Sounds like it should be counted as a valid research paper if you translate a valuable, but unreadable research paper into something that people can read and understand, even if you add not a single original idea. | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 21:30 | comment | added | JeffE | @kubanczyk Not all research is experimental research. But all good researchers are teachers, even if they're only teaching other researchers. (Also, all True Scotsmen love haggis.) | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 16:43 | comment | added | kubanczyk | @JeffE The goal of a researcher is to predict the experiment result as precisely as possible. The goal of a teacher is to get ideas into others' heads. | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 15:49 | comment | added | JeffE | @user2338816 The point of communication is to get ideas into other people's heads. Research is a particular form of communication where those ideas are actually new. | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 6:26 | comment | added | user2338816 | @JeffE No, entire point of communication, and not research, is to get new ideas into other people's heads. High quality research might never be communicated to anyone else at all. Now, in "modern" science, failure to communicate research results would strictly limit career possibilities in academia; but it can lead to extreme success in various business endeavors for example. | |
| Feb 19, 2017 at 18:43 | comment | added | Mark S. | In your discussion of "all else equal", I would be careful with changing things into "simple English phrases" as a rule. English uses a lot of phrasal verbs and set phrases like "all else equal" which may be difficult for a nonnative speaker. For example, "disassemble" is easier to just look up in a dictionary than a phrase like "take apart", which has a special meaning that may be hard to find when looking up the words individually (if the reader doesn't realize it's a phrasal verb), especially in a foreign language dictionary, especially when "take" is included in so many phrasal verbs. | |
| Feb 19, 2017 at 17:21 | comment | added | Szabolcs | @JeffE Lars Onsager, a Nobel prize winner who managed to solve deep and difficult problems that no one else could touch, was notoriously bad at explaining things at an accessible level. Follow my link for some anecdotes. Solving problems and "getting ideas into people's heads" are separate things, as Jeff said. | |
| Feb 19, 2017 at 16:44 | comment | added | JeffE | I have many unusual opinions. Yes, I believe researchers who cannot communicate are bad researchers. The entire point of research is to get new ideas into other people's heads. | |
| Feb 19, 2017 at 16:31 | comment | added | Jeff | @JeffE You don't believe you can be good at research but bad at writing? That seems like an... unusual claim. | |
| Feb 19, 2017 at 16:22 | comment | added | JeffE | Being good at research in your field is an entirely separate skill from being able to communicate ideas clearly. -- I strongly disagree, your example notwithstanding. The ability to clearly communicate ideas is an integral component of being good at research. A few outliers are so good at some parts of the research process that they don't need to be good at other parts, but they are outliers. | |
| Feb 19, 2017 at 8:26 | history | answered | Jeff | CC BY-SA 3.0 |