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Comment by goodmythical | Hacker News Reader

I am genuinely curious as to which words in the cited are 'confusing science speak' in your view.

Having read the article, I can't venture a guess without feeling condescending...non-conforming? Compensatory?

Legitimately confused.

They use precise but indirect terminology e.g., "heightened level of appearance self-esteem" rather than "confident in their appearance".

Indirect phrasing e.g., "they respond more favorably to products that can help to repair their damaged appearance self-esteem" rather than something direct and easy to understand like "they feel bad that they don't fit, so they end up buying other things like makeup/jewelry to feel better about their appearance".

Maybe it's me, but only the first quote seems cumbersome, and wasn't very cumbersome in the article when I read it in context.

”I had no issues with complex sentence structure, therefore the whole planet is fluent in english and college-level literate”

Simpler language is an accessibility issue

Being able to easily, and quickly read scientific literature is not a universal trait. You're in the top 1% (probably top 0.1%?) if you're able to do that and actually understand the source material.

The average person has a hard time reading and fully understanding a newspaper article or cooking instructions on a pre-prepared meal.

The first paragraph is fine -- I agree. The second paragraph is a silly hyperbole that comes up over and over again on HN and needs to die. Major newspapers are written for about 8th grade level reading comprehension. Cooking instructions on a prep'd meal are probably much lower -- maybe 5th grade. The "average person" (whatever that term means) living in highly developed nations can read at 8th grade level or above.

Well, except for America, according to statistics :P

You can't write "feel bad that they don't fit" in a paper. What do you think this is, the yellow papers?

Why can't you write that? It is much more accurate than their own version since what they wrote is very suggestive while this is just describing what happened.

I think they read the full paper rather than the snippets and agree most couldn't tell you what Cronbach's alpha is, how ANOVA works, or otherwise accurately interpret the meaning of the results sections in a casual read through. One can grab the full paper on resources such as Anna's Archive if they don't have access via a university or such.

Of course, the trick (once you know) is you don't need a comment summarizing it for you. The abstract is alright in a pinch, but the "General Discussion" in psychology papers is the equivalent of "Conclusion" and aims to discuss the results directly. It's still a bit verbose... but the language should at least be very familiar in comparison.

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