Comments on: How to Make Our Ideas Clear — to Others

By: Torbjörn Larsson

Torbjörn Larsson — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 15:30:57 +0000

“But those scientists let claims like “science has not been able to provide a coherent theory as to how life could have arisen from natural processes” go unanswered, when in fact such a coherent theory exists and is well undersood by experts in the field.”

But this is a claim besides the facts, which is the only answer to give to it. Evolution describes how life evolves after abiogenesis. It is the creationists who falsely insists both that evolution must describe this (it must not, evolution works on existing life) and that “we don’t know yet” is unacceptable in science. (There are of course quite a few hypothesis on abiogenesis, but no proven theory.)

By: Bill Tozier

Bill Tozier — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:54:34 +0000

I still refer to Adios, Strunk and White often. In many settings.

Sure, it’s counter-prescriptive. Sure, it promotes everybody-is-right-and-we-all-winnism. But it has some good advice, presented well enough that it suffices to be first advice to new writers.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:50:00 +0000

For Onsager’s biographical background see the article on Onsager, by H. C. Longuet-Higgins and Michael Fisher, Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences vol. 60 (1991), pp. 183-232. Onsager was sometimes mischievous in communicating his discoveries, as with his work on the Ising model, when he announced his results at meetings long before publishing; I suspect this was partly to see if anyone else could derive it. His Ising model work was very difficult for people (even people like Yang) to understand because the maths were not a sort previously used in statistical physics, although the work was immediately appreciated as a tour de force. He didn’t plan to use obscure maths, it was just the direction that his work happened to take. It was only when his assistant Bruria Kaufman (who also worked with Einstein) applied more standard physicist’s mathematics that others could follow it. Onsager wasn’t deliberately obscure in his publications, but he sometimes didn’t realize his audience’s limitations.

Perhaps a difference in the appreciation of the work of Swiss mathematical physicist E. C. G. Stueckelberg, vs. the appreciation of Feynman, whose early QED work was also misunderstood or not understood, was that Feynman had the good fortune to have brilliant “interpreters” such as Dyson.

By: Randolph Fritz

Randolph Fritz — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:14:54 +0000

Lectures on style are perhaps not to the point here; the people you are trying to reach have to first be persuaded that writing style is important, and you have years of bad teaching to get past. People don’t become scientists (except some specialities) because they’re interested in people. Communication simply isn’t high on the priority list for many of the best; they don’t learn how, the primary “education” system discourages most of them, and some of them have actual psychological disabilities in this area (oh the humanity!)

By: agm

agm — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:01:11 +0000

Mr. Kuzma,

that’s because the good writing should be reserved for the grant proposals, no? Conservation of compositional ability…

By: Megami

Megami — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:07:34 +0000

I have edited a few academic papers now, and I agree that many written by people from non-English speaking backgrounds can end up as bizarre as bad, due to the fact they use grammar/sentence construction from their native language when trying to express an idea in English.
As for how to learn to write better – I find that trying to rely on style guides/writing guides/university handouts will only go so far. You have to somehow absorb the ability – and I believe that the way to do it is read, read, read as much good and clear writing as you can, and try to think through “Why is this good?” It takes more than a skip through a style guide to improve a piece of rubbish writing.
And don’t forget – hire an editor :)

By: Shelby

Shelby — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:25:18 +0000

Coming from a legal background, I’ve noted that much bad writing stems from a lack of worthwhile content. Few people can write clearly about a bad idea, but many believe they can hide it in a pile of bad writing. Sometimes good ideas also suffer from this, so I can’t dismiss something out of hand based on its lack of clarity. It is a useful rule of thumb, though.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:34:40 +0000

It broke my heart to see scientists simply refusing to acknowledge the various hearings on Intelligent Design, and refusing in turn to participate in any way with them.

This is very misguided. What biologists, quite rightly, have refused to lend their credibility to are unwinnable rigged “debates” with creationist liars, and kangaroo trials like the Kansas “hearings” (where the cause of rationality was very ably defended by a brilliant lawyer, Pedro Irrigaray- a good lawyer, unlike almost any scientist, knows how to cope with the shyster tactics on display in such a travesty.) Many scientists have made their voices heard in fora where they have a fair chance to be heard. And by the way, there are some really brilliant recent popular books on evolutionary biology written by distinguished biologists rather than science writers- probably the best contribution that scientists can make to public understanding. My vote for the best of the bunch goes to Sean Carroll’s (note, not the blogging cosmologist S.C.), Endless Forms Most Beautiful.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:28:10 +0000

I think that scientists have participated in the various debates and trials relating to ID and evolution. SJ Gould took time off to testify in Kansas, IIRC.

There’s something out there about how effective Darwin’s writing and persuasive rhetoric were. He can be read as literature.

By: Matt Kuzma

Matt Kuzma — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:21:30 +0000

I would also like to point out that when we instead talk about how scientists and scholars deal with the rest of the world, there’s another problem at play.

Within the scientific community ideas stand on their own. Scientists are encouraged to present their ideas clearly and honestly and to let the readers determine the worth of those ideas as independently as possible. In short, there is no salesmanship in scientific publication, or at least it is discouraged.

Likewise when reading published articles, scientists are encouraged to take ideas at face value. The ramifications regarding prestige, money, or anything else are to take a back seat to the validity of the idea and its ability to explain observable phenomena.

As a result, scientists are perhaps the only community of intellectuals left on Earth who believe that ideas speak for themselves.

It broke my heart to see scientists simply refusing to acknowledge the various hearings on Intelligent Design, and refusing in turn to participate in any way with them. The hearings are preposterous when viewed from the perspective of scientists who use evolutionary theory every day, and see it verified every day. But those scientists let claims like “science has not been able to provide a coherent theory as to how life could have arisen from natural processes” go unanswered, when in fact such a coherent theory exists and is well undersood by experts in the field. But those experts refused to speak up because they believe that simply being right is enough.

I recognize that this is an over-simplified view of the scientific community as a whole, and that there are always exceptions both in individuals (some are more aware of the need to sell ideas than others), and in certain classes of writing (such as grant proposals, which require some small measure of persuasion). But when it comes to the issue of scientists relating to the world at large, I believe that no amount of writing for clarity will do the job – scientists need to learn and accept the value of rhetoric.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:06:37 +0000

How communicative was Kurt Goedel, even during his pre-insane years? I still suspect that the topic of Onsager’s research (turbulence) had something to do with his neglect.

By: dearieme

dearieme — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:01:23 +0000

I recommend “The Complete Plain Words” by Gowers. Plenty of dry humour and comprehensible whatever your discipline.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 14:56:30 +0000

Some bad writing in lit departments comes from the attempt to write literature about literature, following euphuistic or Gongorist literary models. Some (especially anyone following Lacan) comes from scientistic mystificationism.

By: Bro. Bartleby

Bro. Bartleby — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:56:48 +0000

Put a copy of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” on your desk and use it whenever you need to recall how to communicate with a good and true and simple sentence.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:34:49 +0000

To continue with the Onsager anecdotes, I recall hearing that he was fired (or at least not promoted) by Johns Hopkins due to his inability to teach undergraduate chemistry courses. The students just had no idea what he was talking about.