this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] shneancy@lemmy.world 137 points 1 month ago (55 children)

quick rant

i'm so tired of over the top "intellectual" vocabulary in academia. a lot of concepts could be explained with simple words and would get the point across just as well, or better, and additionally make the conversation more accessible to those outside of a specific field. Why do you need to use big smart words to explain simple things? Is it because it tickles your ego when people need 10 minutes to comprehend one sentence? argh

[–] SolarMonkey 19 points 1 month ago

100%. This is actually the entire reason I dropped out of my masters program.

I’m a science communicator. My whole purpose for existing is making science accessible to people with less formal science training than a high school student.

I was going for a masters in conservation biology, because what better to communicate these days, right? And in the limnology class I took the first semester, all my papers got poor marks for failing to use the unnecessary academic terminology. It was all entirely correct information, just simplified, and that was unacceptable.

And I can’t work under those terms. I just am entirely incapable of making things overly complicated for no reason. It’s a force for specificity sometimes, but usually what it actually does is limit the reach of the work. And that’s just stupid.

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