I don't really see the problem here, to be honest.
Thoreau wrote that real reading is that which we have to "stand on our tiptoes", and "devote our most wakeful hours" to grasp. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze believed that we aren't really thinking if we don't struggle with the content. He maybe took it to an overly extreme level in his writing, but I like his general point.
The article cites the increased presence of words such as 'robust’, ‘significant’, ‘furthermore’ and ‘underlying’ as examples of how papers are getting harder to read.
They go on to say,
>The words aren’t inherently opaque, but their accumulation adds to the mental effort involved in reading the text.
The article doesn't sufficiently explain why mental effort is something to be avoided. Or why multisyllabic words are actually bad. Perhaps if one read more texts with lots of multisyllabic words it would get easier over time?
They give a scary example sentence from an abstract (completely taken out of context anyhow):
>Here we show that in mice DND1 binds a UU(A/U) trinucleotide motif predominantly in the 3' untranslated regions of mRNA, and destabilizes target mRNAs through direct recruitment of the CCR4-NOT deadenylase complex.
Well a good reader knows that when you don't know a word, you look it up. If i was reading this paper I would have to look up just about everything in that sentence:
What is DND1?
What is a "UU(A/U) trinucleotide motif??
What is "the 3' untranslated regions of mRNA", what is translation of mRNA for that matter? What does mRNA even do?
What is a target mRNA and what does it mean for one to be destabilized?
What is the CCR4-NOT deadenylase complex?
Would it take me hours to read this paper and gain an incomplete, novice-level understanding of it? Yes. But just in that one sentence I would learn like 1000% more about biology than I currently know.
You do not need researchers to waste time writing a basic biology textbook in every single one of their papers. You need them to communicate their research and get to the point. If the reader wants to understand it they need to put in the work, science will never be easy and devoid of mental effort.
I realize this will not be a popular post as many people value accessibility in science and more widespread science literacy. But I argue that accessibility is not the same thing as easy reading, and a literacy built on purposefully watered down texts is a cheap knockoff of true understanding won through dedicated effort.
> But just in that one sentence I would learn like 1000% more about biology than I currently know.
I mean, no you wouldn't. DND1 is a protein name and googling it won't tell you exactly what it does, because it may be involved in several pathways. There is probably a gene dnd1 (note the lowercase) that will muddle up your search results . Destabilizing mRNAs can happen a bunch of ways and knowing the others won't help you with that one, also the vast majority of biologists don't care about mRNA being destabilized one way or the other. Biology is a ton of details, and by learning too much too early about the details you miss the big picture. Just sign up for a class if you're at this level.
> You need them to communicate their research and get to the point.
Arguably the problem with the sentence you quoted is it gets too much to the point. It is very precise and obviously of use to anyone is interested in mRNA decay. It does not tell you what most HN readers want to know, which is why they should care about mRNA decay.
(And if they want to know that, they should read review articles.)
There is a problem with opaque biology papers, but in my experience, the main problem in those cases are the data (impossible to find) and the figures (tables filled with bad statistics and low-res western blot pics). I understand all the jargon in the sentence you quoted, but none of the implications; and I understand that this means I haven't learned anything by reading it at all (though I do have a grad degree in biology).
The issue isn't the use of technical words or trying to make the papers accessible to a general audience, it's that more and more publications are writing in an awful style and using unnecessary language to try and sound more scientific.
Often trying to cover up the fact their paper isn't very interesting or novel, but if it sounds really complicated it must be good, right?
Thoreau wrote that real reading is that which we have to "stand on our tiptoes", and "devote our most wakeful hours" to grasp. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze believed that we aren't really thinking if we don't struggle with the content. He maybe took it to an overly extreme level in his writing, but I like his general point.
The article cites the increased presence of words such as 'robust’, ‘significant’, ‘furthermore’ and ‘underlying’ as examples of how papers are getting harder to read.
They go on to say,
>The words aren’t inherently opaque, but their accumulation adds to the mental effort involved in reading the text.
The article doesn't sufficiently explain why mental effort is something to be avoided. Or why multisyllabic words are actually bad. Perhaps if one read more texts with lots of multisyllabic words it would get easier over time?
They give a scary example sentence from an abstract (completely taken out of context anyhow):
>Here we show that in mice DND1 binds a UU(A/U) trinucleotide motif predominantly in the 3' untranslated regions of mRNA, and destabilizes target mRNAs through direct recruitment of the CCR4-NOT deadenylase complex.
Well a good reader knows that when you don't know a word, you look it up. If i was reading this paper I would have to look up just about everything in that sentence:
What is DND1? What is a "UU(A/U) trinucleotide motif?? What is "the 3' untranslated regions of mRNA", what is translation of mRNA for that matter? What does mRNA even do? What is a target mRNA and what does it mean for one to be destabilized? What is the CCR4-NOT deadenylase complex?
Would it take me hours to read this paper and gain an incomplete, novice-level understanding of it? Yes. But just in that one sentence I would learn like 1000% more about biology than I currently know.
You do not need researchers to waste time writing a basic biology textbook in every single one of their papers. You need them to communicate their research and get to the point. If the reader wants to understand it they need to put in the work, science will never be easy and devoid of mental effort.
I realize this will not be a popular post as many people value accessibility in science and more widespread science literacy. But I argue that accessibility is not the same thing as easy reading, and a literacy built on purposefully watered down texts is a cheap knockoff of true understanding won through dedicated effort.