I have noticed that lately it is growing more difficult to read and understand some of the research articles published in medical and scientific journals. Some of them express both research designs and results in an obscure and long-winded language that really represents a waste of good journal space and unduly taxes the patience of the reader.
In the Lancet for February 5, Michael O'Donnell has some pertinent comments to make regarding the turgid and opaque language, and the sometimes pointless arguments used in medical reports. He writes that "scientific papers serve the needs of their authors above those of their readers". Authors, he remarks, are often eager to see their names in print, so that they can quote more contributions to knowledge in their curricula vitae.
To blind the hapless reader with scintillating prose is part of the pernicious process. So we have to endure what O'Donnell calls "decorated municipal gothic" or "decorated platitudinous gothic (educationalist)" to enhance the author's image, regardless of meaning. This is strictly dishonest, since the sole legitimate object of a scientific paper is to convey research results to others as lucidly as possible.
Clinicians in particular should take the liberal, humanitarian and literate approach when describing their patients, and not be obsessed with a vocabulary which may indeed be evidence-based but which carefully avoids landing the author with personal responsibility for his or her own statements.
Gobbledegook is defined as "official, professional, or pretentious verbiage or jargon". The word is believed to be derived from the noise made by turkey-cocks, whereas "jargon" is developed from the twittering of birds, and is defined as making simple ideas sound profound to the uninitiated.
Attempts to disguise meanings so that if they are disputed the author of a statement may claim lack of responsibility are, of course, as old as politics. Politicians are the chief offenders; indeed, obscurity of utterance is part of their stock in trade, and this characteristic extends to local authority staff and civil servants, despite sporadic attempts to reform the situation.
There is a substantial dictionary of terms dealing with the disguising of intentions by language, from the relatively innocent euphemism and circumlocution to the more sinister double-Dutch, doublespeak, mumbo-jumbo and bureaucratese, all managed to perfection by the gentle art of spin-doctoring. And it can be shown by rhetorical pleading that in politics and law, what one person means by "black" another will call "white", without whingeing.