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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Why do academics write in such an unreadable, handwavy manner?

> IT-enabled services transformation, as our colleagues Stuart Feldman, Kenji Kushida, Jonathan Murray, and Niels Christian Nielsen have argued in other venues, was based on the application of an array of computable algorithms to myriad activities, from consumption and leisure to services and manufacturing. The movement of these algorithms to the cloud, where they can be easily accessed, created the infrastructure on which, and out of which, entire platform-based markets and ecosystems operate. Platforms and the cloud, an essential part of what has been called the “third globalization,” reconfigure globalization itself.

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I'm going to disagree with the other comments here. It's not because they're paid by the word, or because they've never been taught how to write effectively. It's mandatory to be taken seriously in the circles the author cares about. You have to demonstrate that you know the "stylistic lingo" to get your ideas taken seriously, so that lingo is used.

Simply put, you are not the intended audience for the paper or it would have been written in the style you prefer. See: Malcolm Gladwell.

Also:

1) You need to be exactly at the article length limit. Usually means cutting out a lot of detail and gentle explanations you had in your first draft, but might also mean a need to pad a bit.

2) You need to cite everyone who is probable to be your peer reviewer.

My theory is the tortured (pompous) language exists to make articles seem more complex and important than they actually are.

> Sociologists have long tried and failed to draw a line between science and pseudoscience. In physics, though, that ‘demarcation problem’ is a non-problem, solved by the pragmatic observation that we can reliably tell an outsider when we see one. During a decade of education, we physicists learn more than the tools of the trade; we also learn the walk and talk of the community, shared through countless seminars and conferences, meetings, lectures and papers. After exchanging a few sentences, we can tell if you’re one of us. You can’t fake our community slang any more than you can fake a local accent in a foreign country.

from a recent HN story, "What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12268362

I agree with the idea (as has been revealed in a number of fake yet published articles) that you can fairly easily scam non-scientific journals with fake papers. But there are still fake or non-successful scientist papers too.

Yes, exactly. The same phenomenon is seen in fine arts when people apply for grants, fellowships and such. It's very formulaic --and plain language is not going to persuade any of the gatekeepers.

Having been in academia myself, I remember "learning" how to write articles by reading other articles. With the exception of one briljant prof I had, most other professors would expect you to write in that style, and if not, that would typically be reflected in your grade. I don't even think this is intentional, they probably learned to write articles the same way.

I remember that the best written articles are typically also from tenured professors leading the field they were writing about, and who would not need to worry about bad peer reviews or other ways their articles would be assessed. (Which leads to the question of they became tenured because of their great communication, or if they are finally free to communicate normally now that they've reached a tenured position)

That author needs an editor. Their message, edited down:

... the platform operator has ... control over the ... work, while ... claiming to be only an intermediary. ... As the power is centralized, the platform owner can become a ... monopolist. ... The platform owner can squeeze the platform community — the ... participants in the ecosystem who are ... creating the value ...

(There's also a long digression on "robots will take all the jobs", but that belonged in a different article.)

>Why do academics write in such an unreadable, handwavy manner?

Because few were taught good writing style, whereas all were told to pad their writing and use 10-dollar words so it looks "academic" and makes for a longer (scientific) paper.

(I shouldn't speak though, since english is not my first language, and when commenting fast, as I usually do on HN, I always make tons of typos and syntactic mistakes).

Because it would be too easy to say: computers are good at solving matching problems, and economies of scale dictate that a few companies own and maintain the majority of computers, leasing them out to solve matching problems on demand.

"Forget all that 'local minima' stuff. Just tell them the crystal has a bubble in it and you need to shake it out."

Because if you don't give credit to the other people in the field, you are less likely to get through peer review, and people will constantly suggest that you read their work -- even though you already have. You prove that you are one of the group by namedropping, citing lots of other papers, and using the same jargon everyone else does.

yeah I found it hard to get through and gave up after skimming through parts of it

this clunker of a sentence stood out...

Airbnb and Uber use these newly available cloud tools to force deep changes in a variety of incumbent businesses

It's not that these writers incapable of writing succinctly ..I think there is a premium in academia on verbosity.

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