Number of words: 471<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time\u201d, according to a new paper just out. Swedish researchers Pontus Plaven-Sigray and colleagues say that scientists today use longer and more complex words than those of the past, making their writing harder to read. But what does it mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s been a clear decrease in Flesch Reading Ease scores, along with increases in New Dale-Chall difficulty scores, both of which indicate declines in readability. These metrics are often used to estimate the \u2018reading level\u2019 of a text, and Plaven-Sigray et al. say that \u201cmore than a fifth of scientific abstracts now have a readability considered beyond college graduate level English.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s driving the change? These readability metrics are based on a combination of the average sentence length and the average word length (Flesch) or word \u2018commonness\u2019 (Dale-Chall). Plaven-Sigray et al. found that the decreasing readability of abstracts was mostly due to changes in word use, although sentence length has been increasing slightly since 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In particular, Plaven-Sigray et al. point to increases in the use of what they call \u201cgeneral scientific jargon\u201d or \u201cscience-ese\u201d, which they define as \u201cvocabulary which is almost exclusively used by scientists and less readable in general.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Science-ese\u2019, they say, includes words like \u201cmoreover\u201d, \u201cunderlying\u201d, \u201crobust\u201d, and \u201csuggesting\u201d. While not scientific terms per se, these are rarely used outside scholarly discourse today. Plaven-Sigray et al. show that use of these words has increased over time, and have contributed to the decrease in readability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, the authors conclude that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have shown a steady decrease of readability over time in the scientific literature\u2026 Lower readability implies less accessibility, particularly for non-specialists, such as journalists, policy-makers and the wider public\u2026 decreasing readability cannot be a positive development for efforts to accurately communicate science to non-specialists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, non-specialists in the past would have struggled to even find a copy of a biomedical abstract, so I\u2019m not sure they would have been able to benefit from its readability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, I\u2019m not surprised by these results. In fact, they match nicely with my own analysis of word use in abstracts, in which I noted that there\u2019s been a shift in the words scientists use to describe their findings. While 100 years ago, terms like \u201cnotes\u201d and \u201cobservations\u201d were preferred, there has been a gradual shift towards more formal, specialized terms like \u201cdata\u201d and \u201cresults\u201d. I speculated about what this means:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rise of \u201cdata\u201d seems to reflect a reversal in the relationship between science and the rest of the world. My impression is that \u201cdata\u201d is being used more and more widely in normal discourse but this is a borrowing, so to speak, from science, whereas previously, science was borrowing from everyday life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n