this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Science

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[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

TLDR just look at this chart: https://journals.sagepub.com/cms/10.1177/01461672231209400/asset/images/large/10.1177_01461672231209400-fig2.jpeg

The choice of paratheses make this paper so hard to read:

"We also find a negative (positive) correlation between cognitive ability and pessimistic (realistic) beliefs"

[–] lckdscl@whiskers.bim.boats 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That's a common convention in academic papers to demonstrate pairs of correlations, it's the same as writing

"We also find a positive correlation between cognitive ability and realistic beliefs AND a negative correlation between cognitive ability and pessimistic beliefs."

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for explaining that. I hate it.

[–] leds@feddit.dk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds like you improved your cognitive ability

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Cognitive ability and memory are two very different things.

[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I aslo cn tip lik dis an u no Wat I mnt. Itz lot shrtr 2. y dnt acadmiks do dis? its highr cognitv lod 2 thy lik dat rite?

There's a reason (no good reason) normal (academics) human beings don't (do) use that kind of positive (negative) writing.

My field has different but equally terrible high cognitive load writing conventions, and I call them out as bad every time.

[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 0 points 1 year ago

I end up reading a lot of academic journals, and the way that they're written I swear are intentionally obtuse. Sometimes people say "they only seem that way because they are communicating complex ideas", but when I read papers in my own field I know that that's not really the case. I once made it three quarters of the way through an article before I realized that all they were doing was slapping a PID on the problem they were defining. You could have written the same article and made it understandable to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the subject but instead they had to make it so obtuse that practitioners in the field would really struggle.