Scientists Reveal How They Use Over-the-Top Language to Hide Their Stupid Mistakes

Scientific writing can sound impressive right up until you realize it is mostly hiding a very ordinary mistake.

That is the joke running through this collection of field-report examples, where overblown jargon and formal phrasing make simple blunders sound almost heroic. The internet had a field day with the contrast, and once you start noticing it, the pattern is hard to unsee.

From awkward wording to accidental comedy, these examples show how far people will go to make a mistake sound official. And somehow, that only makes it funnier.

It began with this example from user blueelectricangels.

Some language demands are related to text types, which have specific conventions regarding format, expected content, tone, and common grammatical structures (e.g., if… then…), etc. The language demands of other tasks are not as predictable and may vary depending on the situation.

Froggy Boi

That is a very fancy way to say somebody messed up.

It turns out there is a never-ending amount of these examples if you just dig into field reports a little bit.

But how does one develop academic language? The California State University, Northridge, states that there is no one way to go about it.

For text types, it is important to make the conventions explicit, often providing graphic organizers when students are first learning how to produce the text type.

For less predictable language tasks, students need to understand the nature of the task and the range of possible responses and associated language. When students are just learning to use a particular form of academic language, they will need more scaffolding and support. For example, an English teacher trying to develop students’ abilities to follow up on a student comment might invite students to brainstorm different types of responses (e.g., agreement with elaboration, agreement with qualification, disagreement) together with some typical sentence starters or grammatical structures for each type of response.

Speaking of hiding dangers behind fancy language, Professor Brian Cox’s toxic-cave expedition in Cueva de Villa Luz is its own warning.

I think this is it.

Yep, that looks like the exact moment the plan fell apart.

What a sentence.

Correct.

Another masterpiece of accidental science writing.

I think this is also it.

Incredible use of scientific funding.

And somehow, it keeps getting better.

This is what NASA has been doing with their funding all these years...

Want more extreme “don’t trust the wording” science, see Professor Brian Cox in Cueva de Villa Luz.