Wrapping up diamonds in recycled newspaper
| 2 November, 2010 | Morgan Giddings |
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The NSF just announced a new initiative to help women tackle obstacles in their science careers. It’s focused on providing PhD students with inspiration and motivation, based on success stories of other women that have done it. Good stuff, right?
But that’s only my own interpretation. I’m not actually sure if this is what the initiative is all about, because I’m a dummy who likes simple, obvious writing.
Simple and obvious the press release isn’t. Let’s start with the title (a good title is worth 1,000’s of words): “online resource that offers resilience training for women in science.”
First of all, what’s “resilience training”? Resilience is very generic, and could be applied to anything. Resilience against failure? Resilience against ultraviolet exposure at the beach? Who knows?
And that’s the point. The title is so generic that it doesn’t motivate further reading.
If you happen to remain motivated and you dive in, you’ll encounter sentences like this one: “The site is based on an extensive foundation of theory and research on psychological processes, environmental context, and personal behaviors that contribute to women’s experiences in career paths.”
As far as I can tell (at least for anyone who is breathing), we all have experiences and psychological processes in our career paths. From reading this, I’m not really sure what, exactly, the site is going to do for me with this factoid.
If I were still seeking my PhD, what I’d want to know is: how can this site actually benefit me and help me with whatever obstacles I’m facing right now?
But I didn’t get that simple yet vital information from reading the release. I got a bunch of facts about what the thing is, but not much of anything about why it is useful and what benefits it gives to the target audience.
You may think I’m being harsh. But I’m doing so to make a point: this is a potent illustration of how academic-styled writing often fails.
You may have the best discovery or invention in the world (the diamonds). However, unless you can actually communicate its benefits to people who may be interested in that thing, few people will ever find out about it or use it (unless you get really lucky). It’s like wrapping those diamonds up in recycled newspaper where nobody can ever see them.
And that’s the thing about academic writing. It’s often focused on facts and figures wrapped up in obfuscated language, rather than on benefits and reasons expressed in clear terms.
Benefits, clearly expressed, are what get people reading. Facts, obfuscated by complexity, are what get people snoring.
I’m assuming that the authors of this press release would like people to use their resource.
Likewise, I’m assuming that you want people to read your papers and attend your lectures.
Then remember this motto: simple benefits, not just complex facts.
Now, because I’ve been a bit harsh on the authors work here, I’ll volunteer to rewrite the release for them if they wish. I suspect we could get a lot more young PhD women interested in their program, and that sounds like a good thing.
If you want further insights on how to do great science and communicate it, grab the free report here.
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Morgan Giddings is a scientist and writer who currently works at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill as an associate professor.
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I both agree and disagree with the above. I certainly agree that much academic writing would appeal to a wider audience if written more clearly and directly. I personally hate overly complicated language filled with buzz words and dense scientific language. However, rather than giving generic advice to suit every situation (as above), what really needs to be done is to think of your audience when writing. For example, for academic audiences you do need to use some of the above language, otherwise academics may feel that you are being too simplistic. Similarly, in biotech, there are many buzz words that, while annoying, will better reach your specific audience in some cases than the more direct language. I speak (and write) differently depending upon whether I talk to medical colleges, PhD collegues, business people at my company, or family without a college education.
Most graduate students have a difficult time, male or female. It is actually my perception that now men have a harder time than women do.
Some graduate students have absolutely horrendous experiences and administrators do nothing, which is why those who make their lives awful know they can do it. But women are fairly protected now.
I have seen multiple odious cases in recent years where women abused the system to stay in and get graduated when they richly deserved to have been cut years before. Accusations against male professors, and threats from women are paid attention to.
I do not see this for men. I do not see men getting helped except through backchannels if they have a problem, not matter how egregious, no matter how abusive, not matter how appallingly they are being treated.