2/4

Andrew Gelman writes:

I completely disagree with Seth's comment that "among academics to write clearly is low status, to write mumbo-jumbo is high status." What Seth is missing here is that it's difficult to write clearly. My impression is that people write mumbo-jumbo because that's what they know how to do; writing clearly takes a lot of practice. It's often surprisingly difficult to get people to state in writing exactly what they did (for example, in fitting a model to data). It takes continual effort to express oneself clearly and directly. Language is inherently nonalgorithmic. It might be that high-status people write mumbo-jumbo, but I suspect that's just because they're not putting in the immense effort required to write clearly. Lots of low-status academics write mumbo-jumbo also

I think both are right - both reasons explain part of the problem, but there are at least two others:

3. Many academics want to publish in English, but it's not their mother tongue.

4. I remember reading that famous Habermas book and trying to figure out for about two minutes what he meant to say in one short passage. I finally realized he didn't know himself. I think it was Wittgenstein who said something along the lines of: "It is rare that a clear thought does not find a clear expression."

P.S.: If you find some language errors in this post, consider them a clever joke.