On the poor readability of scientific articles

It is a well-known fact that many scientific articles are of poor readability, which has plagued scientific community for quite some time, and indeed has been one of its worst kept secrets. A suggested remedy is to tackle the problem at its source by making scientific writing an essential part of the graduate curriculum. While this type of push on the issue is laudable, it nonetheless does not seem to go far enough as to the underlying reasons for the dilemma.

Being a distinct form of artistic pursuits, prose-writing needs to be nurtured while young, similar to many other branches of arts such as music, painting and athletics. Looking at famous artists including writers, past and present, many have developed their artistic talents before reaching 20 years of age. Nurturing prose-writing skills requires considerable efforts, which may involve some rote-learning, and developing a fine understanding and use of various seemingly similar expressions with vastly different meanings. While previous generations had largely undertaken this type of training involuntarily, the more recent ones going through the current school systems have been less well instructed due to constantly changing educational priorities. As a consequence, many school leavers are not only improperly trained in the basic prose-writing, but also ill-prepared in handling simple math problems without the help of a calculator or computer. On countless occasions, we find shop assistants searching through their counters and draws to locate a calculator for a straightforward math problem, which can be easily worked out mentally by an adequately trained primary school student.

Despite the shortcomings of the current school systems, an elite group of school leavers do appear to master the essential skills including prose-writing that are required. Unfortunately, this elite group do not always choose science as their preferred vocation, rather they go on to study law, medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine, etc; and as a result, a majority of them do not engage in scientific research in their working life. Why? Because law or medical graduates are able to command a much better financial package and job security for their trouble in comparison with science graduates, who often face an uncertain, and sometimes bleak future in spite of having gone through many more years of vocational training. In the market equilibrium of price and demand, science courses are only able to attract students with an average score of 80%, while law or medicine courses demand a score of 95% or higher. And this phenomenon is notably prevalent in industrialized nations.

Therefore, the real solution to the poor readability of scientific articles is not simply to include a scientific writing course in the graduate curriculum. It should go further to the primary, secondary and high school systems by refocusing on some rote-learning to nurture prose-writing skills. In addition, science and scientific research have to become more competitive in terms of job security and financial reward, otherwise, they will always play second fiddle in attracting brightest and most capable school leavers to their profession. Obviously, these need to be addressed by governments at various levels. Until then, we will undoubtedly continue to read scientific articles that are poorly written and at times impossible to comprehend.

and another reason for poor readability of scientific articles is that many of the authors of these articles are from non-english-speaking countries. they participated in the writing up of the articles as graduate students, visiting scholars, or international collaborators of research projects. the scientific research as a whole has been increasingly becoming a grand project out-sourced to countries in eastern europe and asia where english is a second or foreign language.

The poor readibility of scientific articles is not limited to authors from non-English background. In fact, a senior guy in my group is an American born and bred. When he writes something, he shows no logic at all. For example, to describe some process, we often go from one direction to another. This guy may go from here, skip to there, and come back and jump to there again. After reading his description, you do not have a clear idea of what he has said. In addition, his use of words and phrases is so monotonous that the same verb can appear in a single paragraph many times.

I agree with you that many of published scientific articles were difficult to understand and they were written by both English and non-English natives. People don』t buy what they don』t understand, and people don』t read those hard to understand again. I don't either. To me, some of these articles were just written for certain people that might be interested in what they wrote, while some of the authors do have problems to express themselves in writing. Generally speaking, highly educated English natives know how to get their ideas cross over to others through their writing, like most of us can write smoothly in our own languages.