Academic Writing Is a Bloated Mess—And Everyone Knows It
Key Insights
- •Academic writing is deliberately convoluted not for precision, but to satisfy a broken incentive system that rewards verbal complexity over clarity
- •Researchers can explain their work clearly in informal settings, proving the opacity of academic prose is a choice driven by social pressure, not necessity
- •Choosing plain language in academic contexts would make research more accessible and useful, but requires accepting career risks that the current system discourages
Psychologist Adam Mastroianni argues that academic writing is deliberately convoluted not for precision, but to satisfy a broken incentive system. He believes that if academia rewarded direct language, research would be far more accessible and useful.
Psychologist Adam Mastroianni is saying what everyone's been thinking: academic writing is a disaster. Not because researchers are bad writers, but because the system actively punishes clarity. Scholars stuff their papers with jargon, hedges, and meaningless filler words—not to be more precise, but to impress reviewers, signal intelligence, and protect themselves from criticism. The result? Simple ideas buried under layers of verbal armor that makes it nearly impossible to figure out what anyone actually believes.
The kicker is that these same academics can explain their work perfectly well when they're chatting over coffee or writing blog posts. The clarity is there—it's just forbidden in formal publications. Mastroianni argues that this 'bag of words' approach isn't just annoying; it actively makes science less useful and harder to understand. If academia rewarded direct language instead of sophisticated-sounding nonsense, research would actually reach people who could use it.