A Critique of Academics

Most academics live and breathe in a world of highly centralized disciplinary jargon. This jargon helps to foster communication within respective fields; however, the same jargon that benefits communication among peers has dug a distinct moat around their ivy layered halls. Needless to say, academics hold an important place in our society and must be appreciated for their contribution to our world; however, somewhere during the process of acquiring tenure, researchers narrow their audience to the point of near-inability to communicate outside the ivory tower.

This problem manifests itself when we hear college students complain about their professors with remarks such as: “she is too smart,” “he can’t break it down to our level” or “she is condescending and acts like a know-it-all.” I believe the cause of this phenomenon boils down to incentives.  As an academic works toward tenure, they must “publish or perish;” however, because academics publish for other academics within their own discipline, their jargon is only compounded.  This continuous jargon use creates an obvious schism between the academic and the average citizen.  When this schism can be crossed, academics help foster the advancement of society in the sense of a more educated populous; however, such a fording of the moat is rare.

Let me attempt to reify my observation with an example of one of the most well-known academic duos in history. Daniel Khaneman and Amos Tversky published their world-renowned paper “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk” in March of 1979.  That paper, coupled with their continued research, would be the catalyst of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics.  However, few people know about prospect theory in its original form, but instead have embraced the field of behavioral economics.

Behavioral economics stemmed from the 1979 paper by Khaneman and Tversky, but would never have received the international attention had the duo, and other similar researchers, not been able to articulate the essence of the paper in an easy to understand fashion for the non-academic.

The abstract of the original paper started with the sentence: “This paper presents a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk, and develops an alternative model, called prospect theory.”  The abstract was not written for the non-academic; rather, the duo was attempting to convey their findings amongst their peers. However, the attempt to discuss the field did not stop with the paper and the prize.  In 2011, Khaneman published Thinking Fast and Slow, which is a pivotal book on behavioral economics written for the educated, but not academic elite.  The book’s introduction includes the line “I hope to enrich the vocabulary that people use when they talk about the judgements and choices of others…” Obviously, this book is not written for a fifth grader, but it is a valiant attempt of a jargon-less publication surrounding a major piece of research.  Furthermore, the success of this approach is exemplified by its 117 weeks and counting on the New York Time’s paperback best seller list.

The effort to make a jargon-less publication is challenging for any discipline.  As an example, consider the difficulty of explaining the financial crisis to the general public: some have tied the cause of the crisis to the trifecta of collateralized debt obligations, mortgage backed securities, and credit default swaps being overleveraged and coupled with the abhorrent actions of the rating agencies in the sense of poor risk classification amongst the different tranches.  Wait…what?  Exactly! This description is a perfect example of the dangers of jargon.

The premise of jargon-free work was encapsulated by the 1965 Nobel Prize Winning Physicist, Richard Feynman.  When asked to prepare a lecture for an audience on an advanced particle spin topic he said, “You know, I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.”  Feynman’s motive for personal understanding may not parallel my quest of research saturation among the population; however, the simplification of ideas he championed via the quote still highlights the paramount need for dispersion of simplified information.

There have been large strides made in attempt to break down this academic divide.  Events and organizations like TED talks help to promote jargon-less descriptions of current academic research.  Furthermore, attempts are made to publish books, articles, and television shows for non-academics (think of Bill Nye the Science Guy or Carl Sagan’s Cosmos); however, it still is not enough.

We must continue to encourage researchers to help bridge the academic to educated divide. Rather than stay in the moat-surrounded ivory tower, academics should embrace Khaneman, Feynman, and Bill Nye in a pursuit of explaining their research to individuals not trained in their unique discipline.  If academic journals and researchers work to publicize their findings in jargon-free language, we will have the opportunity to live in a world that is more educated, more open to ideas, and better informed about research developments of today.