Would science be better communicated in the journals if the authors wrote in plain English rather than jargon? It seems to have worked to some extent in law and that once impenetrable language has now been translated into something that ordinary people can understand and engage with.
Yes, but to some extent only. Scientific journals mainly insist on language that is understandable for the professionals but who are non-specialists. A completely lay person is really not included because this would require extremely simplified language stuffed with long definitions. Such text would be impossible to read.
This is a good idea, most of the time we got comment on our papers that grammer is not upto standard of journal. Use of articles is not correct. If we can ease the English writing in science than it will increase level of science, most of time we spend more time on writing paper than on research. Write paper to scientific journal is a boaring job whereas doing research is a fun. There is a need to change English of scientific writing.
Yes, but to some extent only. Scientific journals mainly insist on language that is understandable for the professionals but who are non-specialists. A completely lay person is really not included because this would require extremely simplified language stuffed with long definitions. Such text would be impossible to read.
Agreement on that, Dragan. In fact simplified English has been already developed since this 850 words based Basic English. A lot of books has been converted into simplified English where exist 5 different levels. Moreover, on-line dictionaires usually provide definition in accordance with specified area.
Besides, e-book readers provide at least basic definitions.
Moreover, some meanings are context specific.
To finalize it, who would decide the level of simplification?
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Circle+%28geometry%29
Dear Each
I can write in hideously coded scientific language and equally arcane legal language because I have had the 'benefit' of being trained to. It is certainly not necessary to communicate either scientific or legal principles in such language, it is merely a way of expressing exclusivity.
It is just as easy to talk about scientific phenomena in plain English, Mandarin, Swahili, Gujerati or Tagalog and legal principles in Arabic, Finnish, Basque or Navaho. (none of these languages or cultures being exhaustive). Science and law are about finding understanding and the philosophies of both predate any of the exclusive and frankly anachronistic methods of their communication. To date scientific and legal language have achieved nothing in terms of extending knowledge and understanding and have been all to do with excluding those not 'admitted to the brotherhood'
Those days are numbered and a better world of understanding will come from it.
Way aye, gan canny wi them spears and divvent dunshus Man!
Sometimes specific professional 'jargon" is key to easily understand the main issue, and sometimes emphasizes identity (as specilist, member of "closed" professional environment) and qualifications of the author. Remember that most of the articles is designated only for narrow group of specialists, not wide publicity. Even popular papers concerning pure scientific problems have very limited auditory. From teh other side: it should be essential for each scientist to explain her/his research in several simple sentences :)
While scientific papers can be argued to be written for a narrow audience, who will of course understand the jargon it should also be understood that the important research papers are interpreted through several filters into a simple language for the press.
This system involves a series of translations from the journal paper in its pure 'scientific' language to the newspaper article in plain if usually ungrammatical English. This 'translation' process leads to major misinterpretations some of them deliberate.
I spent a good number of years in a meta-analysis of prostate cancer publications. The subject area was highly contentious because it challenged the use of a synthetic hormone being used for treating osteoporosis. The obfuscation that scientific jargon facilitated allowed for manipulation of data and in some cases utter disinformation.
One scientists who had published extensively on the subject however wrote at all times in simple language in spite of the complexity of the subject. No meaning was lost in this, no reduction in the superb scientific quality and veracity of his findings.
In my work I am obliged to read preposterous claims about medical science in the newspapers. These fall into two categories, false hope and scare stories and are products of over imaginative science journalists 'interpreting' lab studies published in often obscure journals and based on spurious research.
If many of these studies were written in plain language in the 1st place it may have been easier to spot the bad science behind the flamboyant use of science speak, but hey, perhaps thats why they were not.
I am afraid the jargon is just a part of the problem. Perhaps we should, for starters, settle for a far more modest goal of creating the incentives in favor of writing texts which are clearly written (reader-friendly) and are accessible to a larger portion of specialists in a broad area rather than just a few experts in a very narrow subfield the results belong to.
Also, it would be great if we had, roughly speaking, a well-connected web of results and definitions, so that, at least in principle, one could, if need be, work one's way from the original research articles to survey papers, then to monographs and then to graduate (and then undergraduate) textbooks without major gaps in between. Now one sees quite a lot of gaps, especially at the first and second stages (i.e. going from the research papers to survey papers and from survey papers to graduate textbooks), and again it would be good to see some incentives to fill (or at least reduce) these gaps.
That might be reversing what have been achieved in some fields such as mathematics and other fields which use mathematics to describe things to be studied. The sophistication and jargon are cultures and part and parcel of doing mathematics and describing things that are mathematical and natural. I had opened a discussion thread on how the creation of symbols facilitate the development of mathematics, but prior to creations of symbols mathematics was done in rhetoric and words and the growth was not that good.
Mathematics is an exception to the overall position of science being written in plain language. Since mathematics is a language and communicates ideas without necessarily using words its symbols and special 'syntax' would make less sense than their translation into spoken language.
The use of chemical symbols too does not present a problem as most scientists will be familiar with the periodic table and for that matter so will most amateur scientists who might wish to read scientific journal articles.
Biology and physics presents some of the oddest use of communication and whole lexicons have emerged often arbitrarily and from the imaginations of the scientists.
'Up regulation' and 'down regulation' always amuse me, I often find myself in a pub up regulating beer and at my place of employment am delighted when my workload is down regulated.
There is some justification for using jargon but it should be kept to a minimum. Some papers I have read in the past needed a virtual Rosetta stone of science to decipher and the jargon is often far more difficult to understand than the scientific concepts.
Lawyers used to love talking in their pseudo-masonic code too. This impenetrable and archaic language was used not to codify and simplify legal concepts but to make them the exclusive domain of those trained to use it. In the UK the law has not been diminished by the abandonment of Latin and Norman French. Perhaps it is less 'poetic', less majestic and even less scholarly but after all the law, like science is there to serve us all, not just the members of exclusive secret societies.
Barry, if you research at the front of something new (not thought about before), you certainly cannot just use mere symbols to explain your idea - not even in mathematics. Some argue that math is not even science but a formalism to invent symbols and their manipulation, getting its status in science only through application to 'real world' events.
Explaining new ideas often needs new words to prevent misinterpretations, e.g. 'dark matter' and not just 'up regulated matter'. Dark matter, obviously, doesn't have to be dark but we know what we're speaking of even if we cannot explain it yet. Do you have to explain anything in math that's not related to 'reality'?
An area having not yet been mentioned here is the 'schools of science'. They use the same terms and understand different notions, and this happens within the academic community.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Education
- Higher Education
- Academic Writing