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Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

nature.com

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Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#101

Post by sampo »

dmos62 wrote: post #18

I feel like only the highest profile journals can be trusted at this point. How long will it take academia to adapt?

> I feel like only the highest profile journals can be trusted at this point.

The highest profile journals (Nature, Science, The Lancet in medicine, ...) have some tendency to go for sensationalism. They want to publish radical, ground-breaking research more than there is actual new ground-breaking results happening. So they also end up publishing mediocre research presented as ground-breaking, and some less-than-accurate research where results are exaggerated to make them look ground-breaking.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#103

Post by zwaps »

etempleton wrote: post #92

I often wonder while reading an academic paper how the writing could be as hopelessly bad as it is. This type of manipulation and plagiarism may be partially to blame, but the academic writing style has also gone completely off the rails to the point that half the journal articles being published today read as if written by some kind of paper writing AI robot even when I am quite certain that that isn't the case. And…

I am sure this was not your intention or meaning, but please be aware that it is virtually impossible for a non-native speaker to write perfect English. English is a language you have to intuit. In contrast to other languages, it has very few fixed rules. Writing elegantly in English is most certainly an art form.

Of course, writing good science is hard enough for native speakers. It is very difficult for the vast majority of people on the planet - no matter how good their research.

And just so we are clear: Not everyone can afford professional editing services at every point in their career.

We meet in English under the premise that it allows for universal communication. In this, we accept that English natives are almost infinitely more privileged in writing, speaking, conferencing and networking. We also have to accept that the level of English proficiency varies, and - especially English - is easy to learn and so difficult to master.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#104

Post by craftinator »

aliswe wrote: post #99
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The paper was not bad but the authors did not know English very well, so it was quite difficult to read. That was its main problem. This seems to confirm my suspicion than these cases are not so much about AI-generated content but rather a result of machine translation.

it's a common technique/first layer of plagiarizing a text to translate it from english to eg. spanish and then from spanish to english, to get rid of the unique words the author used.

> it's a common technique/first layer of plagiarizing a text to translate it from english to eg. spanish and then from spanish to english

It's also a common technique for people who don't speak English to translate it... In fact, quite a bit more common.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#105

Post by gunfighthacksaw »

A colleague in an unnamed field, attending an unnamed Polish university mentioned that this kind of thing was rife: publishing Polish papers translated from English texts and occasionally vice versa. Poland is a country with a strong academic tradition and similar enough institutions to others in the EU so I can only imagine this happens in more ‘peripheral’ countries with even less globalization.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#106

Post by raincom »

etempleton wrote: post #92

I often wonder while reading an academic paper how the writing could be as hopelessly bad as it is. This type of manipulation and plagiarism may be partially to blame, but the academic writing style has also gone completely off the rails to the point that half the journal articles being published today read as if written by some kind of paper writing AI robot even when I am quite certain that that isn't the case. And…

A friend submitted a paper to a journal in humanities. The reviewer said "his English is informal". In other words, these reviewers are asking for stilted English.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#107

Post by rhino369 »

aaron-santos wrote: post #67
FabHK wrote: post #62

Some of these tortured phrases are great. My favourites: "flag to clamor" for signal to noise "individual computerized collaborator" for PDA (personal digital assistant) "haze figuring" for cloud computing "information stockroom" for data warehouse "focal preparing unit" for CPU "discourse acknowledgement" for voice recognition "mean square blunder" for MSE (mean square error) "arbitrary right of passage" for random…

I enjoyed finding "counterfeit consciousness" for artificial intelligence. To me it evokes a kind of science fiction that's shown up occasionally on HN[1]. [1] https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

I happen to be reading Dune today, and AI is referred to as counterfeiting the human mind

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#108

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

zwaps wrote: post #103
etempleton wrote: post #92

I often wonder while reading an academic paper how the writing could be as hopelessly bad as it is. This type of manipulation and plagiarism may be partially to blame, but the academic writing style has also gone completely off the rails to the point that half the journal articles being published today read as if written by some kind of paper writing AI robot even when I am quite certain that that isn't the case. And…

I am sure this was not your intention or meaning, but please be aware that it is virtually impossible for a non-native speaker to write perfect English. English is a language you have to intuit. In contrast to other languages, it has very few fixed rules. Writing elegantly in English is most certainly an art form. Of course, writing good science is hard enough for native speakers. It is very difficult for the vast ma…

I think at least skimming some edition of the

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style

and some of what is available under

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=military+writing+guide

would be useful for american english and technical writing.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#109

Post by rusk »

robertlagrant wrote: post #77
rusk wrote: post #68

In telecoms they call all the backend infrastructure “back haul” and have never read a satisfactory explanation. I’m convinced that somebody once coined “back hall” with the intention of invoking the image of service passages like what you see in the mall, it was misheard (as is often the case in Telecomms given it’s global nature) and the metaphor of the bulldozer tail stuck for ever after

IME I think backhaul is just sending data to the main internet, not all backend. I thought it just meant it hauled the data back into the core network.

Main Internet, across main Internet, between networks, intra-domain. Intra-station. Anything that joins it all together that isn’t “front facing” i.e wireless network towards handsets

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#110

Post by rusk »

vericiab wrote: post #84
rusk wrote: post #68

In telecoms they call all the backend infrastructure “back haul” and have never read a satisfactory explanation. I’m convinced that somebody once coined “back hall” with the intention of invoking the image of service passages like what you see in the mall, it was misheard (as is often the case in Telecomms given it’s global nature) and the metaphor of the bulldozer tail stuck for ever after

In freight "backhaul" typically refers to transporting goods during the return journey. During the principle (non-return) journey, often the starting location is more central, like a distribution center, and the destination is a smaller satellite location like a store. So when something is backhauled, that tends to mean it's transported from the smaller satellite location to the central location. Maybe that's where t…

Maybe actually, or at the very least it could explain the confusion. Better than some of the other explanations I’ve heard for sure.
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