This thread demonstrates that a lot of academic writing that *looks* like utter nonsense is merely scholars dressing up a useful but mundane point with a ton of unnecessary jargon.

My theory is that the jargon creates an artificial barrier to entry. https://t.co/MqLyyppdHl

If one must spend years marinating one's brain in jargon to be perceived as an expert on a topic, it protects the status and earning power of people who study relatively easy topics.
In econ, a similar thing is accomplished by what recent Nobel prize winner Paul Romer calls "mathiness": https://t.co/DBCRRc8Mir

But mathiness and jargon are not quite the same...
Jargon usually doesn't force you to change the substance of your central point.

Mathiness often does. By forcing you to write your model in a way that's mathematically tractable (easy to work with), mathiness often impoverishes your understanding of how the world really works.
@Undercoverhist has written about this problem: https://t.co/3YIKZSHkdb
Jargon sounds sillier than mathiness. It looks worse to the public, because most of the public thinks they should be able to understand English but doesn't assume they can understand math.

But mathiness, ultimately, is probably more pernicious.

(end)

More from Noah Smith

Yes, we have been more divided than we are now. Within living memory.


Labor disputes used to kill hundreds of people!

In 1932 Douglas MacArthur called in tanks on protesting veterans, injuring over a thousand people!

In 1967 there were 159 race riots in cities across

In 1921, rioters used airplanes to bomb black businesses in Tulsa, Oklahoma! Hundreds were killed in the riot!
Time for panel #3: Big Tech and regulation!

I will be live-tweeting again, and you can also watch video at either the Twitter or Facebook links below!


Kaissar: Every industry gets regulated when it gets big. The question is what kind of regulation Big Tech will get,and whether the companies will be proactive in shaping it.

Kaissar: More profitable companies have higher returns. Why? Maybe it's a risk factor, because more profit = higher risk of getting regulated.

Bershidskyis showing a diagram of GDPR complaince pop-ups. What a massive ill-conceived bureaucratic mess.

Ritholtz: It's 2018 and we're still talking about Facebook privacy settings?! If you're still giving your personal data to Facebook, you just don't care about privacy!

More from All

https://t.co/6cRR2B3jBE
Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d


Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.


...we raise the perspective that CoVs can persistently infect bats due to their association with biofilm structures. This phenomenon potentially provides an optimal environment for nonpathogenic & well-adapted viruses to interact with the host, as well as for viral recombination.


Biofilms can also enhance virion viability in extracellular environments, such as on fomites and in aquatic sediments, allowing viral persistence and dissemination.

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