

Dancing with Professors: the trouble with academic prose - frisco
http://trc.ucdavis.edu/bajaffee/NEM150/Course%20Content/dancing.htm

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paul_houle
I got a PhD but never found my voice writing as an academic. For a while I
thought I was a bad writer, but I spent a year or two, a few years later,
where the bulk of my income came from writing. I found it was more profitable
to write software than to write computer books, but that was when I realized
the problem was in academic writing, not in me.

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TravisLS
Along the same lines (in case you haven't seen it):

The postmodern essay generator: <http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/>

And Alan Sokal's brilliant hoax: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair>

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lutorm
I really don't see much of this in reading (or writing, hopefully...) papers
in astrophysics. The prose is generally dull and impersonal, sure, but it's
also simple. Obfuscating your own papers won't buy you anything, because
published papers don't count for much unless people cite them. And to do that,
they need to know what they are about.

Of course, there's always a certain degree of what's known as a "community of
practice" in very specialized writing: Words have special meanings and there
are customary ways of expression that makes it hard to penetrate for
outsiders. But that's not because the writing itself is necessarily bad, it's
because you don't know the code it's written in.

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ewjordan
Ha, great article.

Makes me think back to the terribad philosophy classes (at least the softer,
less mathy ones - the pure logic ones were fine) I had to sit through in
college. My trick back then: whenever I read a paper/essay/book on any topic
(particularly metaphysics), I always kept an informal tally of the percentage
of argument devoted to arguing that someone else's definition of a term is
"wrong." Generally speaking, that percentage is inversely proportional to the
overall quality and relevance of the paper - there's no point listening to
people argue whether God exists or not if they're merely redefining "God"
turn-by-turn until they each prove their point!

This obsession with arguing over definitions and attempting to answer ill-
formed questions isn't limited to philosophy, though, it's quite rampant
throughout most of the humanities world and even comes up more often than it
should in sociology and psychology. Which is a shame - those are both fields
where tangible advancements with real world consequences could probably be
made, but mired as they are in soft thinking, where everyone can be right (or
at least present arguments obscure or pointless enough to dodge criticism),
they have a very long way to go. At least psychology is starting to give way
to cognitive science, which may pick up some of the slack; I have yet to see
any sign of future improvement in sociology.

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msluyter
The search for definitions goes back to Socrates -- What is Virtue? What is
Justice? Etc...

I hardly think this denotes bad philosophy.

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nazgulnarsil
I agree with wittgenstein and the parent. most "philosophy" is arguing over
vague definitions. The real meat of philosophy is arguing over axioms. Every
system has presuppositions, those can be fruitfully argued about.

~~~
msluyter
_The real meat of philosophy is arguing over axioms._

Says whom? You're engaging in the very practice the parent is complaining
about -- you're attempting to define philosophy in terms suitable to you. In
other words, attempting to limit the domain of philosophy to exclude
discussion of definitions is an attempt to define philosophy and thus a self-
contradiction.

This is all besides the point. The original article is a critique of
obfuscatory academic writing, and I would assert that one can discuss
semantics -- and philosophy generally -- without necessarily being
obfuscatory.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
discussing semantics is distinct from say discussing how semantic differences
across time influence thought. the former I would not define as philosophy,
the latter I would. discussing semantics is very easy to categorize. I file it
under "discussing semantics".

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tom_b
I think the worst part of this is that "dull writing style is an academic
survival skill because they think that is what editors want." I would argue
with the author's assertion that "dull, impersonal prose" is not sought.

During my CS graduate school days, I saw several examples of technical article
templates (for lack of a better word or phrase) that were specifically geared
to follow the existing style of "successful" journal and conference
submissions. By template, I mean something that was almost pre-written where
you could just drop your data/charts/algorithms/etc into the proper place and
submit. The use of such style templates did not leave much room to actually
focus on the clear communication of ideas in a paper. But there is so much
pressure to publish and build up the CV that I kind of understand why people
used that approach. Combine that with the "hack the paper together in a fury
of writing in the last hours before FedEx can get the submission into the
conference" and I see where writing well is not as valued as simply producing
publications.

Of course, I'm also commenting from the viewpoint of someone who received
feedback on a tech paper along the lines of " . . . I liked the words and flow
. . . but . . " - paraphrasing here - the ideas aren't so good. Not missing
grad school so much these days.

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gintas
I, for one, do claim to understand the quote by Bloom. I think he means that
openness understood as "going with the flow" is in fact not openness at all
because it obscures alternatives. This is actually a theme recurring
throughout the literature, nothing really special.

I do not mean to defend the poor prose of some professors, there is indeed
plenty of that, however, in many cases it is simply not an option to use
everyday terms because of their ambiguousness.

Finally, the charge of obscurantism and particularly its "explanation" by
social factors is just nasty! It's no better than calling your readers too
stupid to understand you. In fact, I would argue that while both factors are
at work, the latter is much more so. But hey, I'm biased.

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ChrisXYZ
I'm hardly a researcher, but I've written my share of dense academic papers as
a student.

I remember not trusting my own ideas if they didn't seem written in a 'smart'
enough way. I almost thought if something could be written simply, it was too
simple.

So I'd re-word my sentences until I came up with something appropriately
jargon-filled and wordy. Then I'd feel better about it.

I guess it comes down to trusting yourself.

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dmfdmf
The good news is the internet will put an end to this type of argument by
intimidation in academia. The university system is toast just like the
journalist and newspapers. No one knows what will replace it but that is the
process underway right now. Do a search for Clay Shirky and his article on
newspapers and journalism, its the same principles.

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pasbesoin
Reminds me of a few sociology papers. Some of the most __* awful, self-
referential terminology I ever came across. Might have been just those papers,
or my mood, but it left a permanent bad taste.

~~~
ewjordan
Neither your mood nor those particular papers were at fault - sociology is a
rancid cesspool, filled to the brim with Humanities-Style-Thinking at its
worst, masquerading as a science because the questions it deals with are more
concrete.

I suppose it's to be expected: the problems that sociology addresses are very
complex ones, beyond the reach of science currently (though we're getting
closer), and soft "methods" are academic Gods-of-the-Gaps that let people
think they're doing useful work while they ramble on and on about topics that
we don't actually have the tools to understand yet. Physics was in a similar
state at one time, and it took several breakthroughs to get it to the point
where we could learn anything useful from it.

~~~
ChristianPerry
I disagree with your assessment of sociology as a discipline "filled to the
brim with Humanities-Style-Thinking."

Sociology uses rigorous, analytical, and quantitative methods to shine insight
on the modern condition. It allows one to better understand the condition of
the world, and by extension, one's place within it. And it has contributed
significantly to my intellectual growth.

When I've felt a lack of community in my life, for instance, Robert Putnam
showed me that civic and social participation in America have systematically
declined for the last six decades.

When I've aspired to get into a good school or _ahem_ a prestigious startup
incubator, Robert Frank explains how concerns of status and position have a
salient effect on my decision making.

When I express a preference for a particular kind of music or type of food,
Bordieu shows that preferences that I take for granted are in fact strongly
correlated with my culture, socioeconomic background, gender, and profession.

When I pay money to send a virtual gift to a friend, Baudrillard shows that
I'm motivated by "sign value" rather than "use value" -- that what an object
represents matters more than what it actually does.

And that's just the beginning.

Sociology gets a lot of criticism, perhaps because it's such a broad field.
However, it has done more to shape my understanding of the world than any
single other discipline, and I'm far from speaking alone.

~~~
ellyagg
Well, you listed several prominent sociologists and stuff they claimed. That
doesn't in any way, shape, or form prove that their claims are true or even
based on falsifiable hypotheses and experimentation like the sciences we
trust, i.e., physics and medicine.

This is probably because sociology is one of those disciplines, and I use the
term loosely, that really isn't yet close to being able to have its referents
captured, chopped up, classified, quantified, analyzed and put into little
boxes.

In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say the observations you point to could
have been made by your run-of-the-mill keen observer of humanity, like a Tom
Wolfe or Shakespeare.

