Could the toxic and dishonest rhetoric from the political arena penetrate the scientific community, Bram Nauta wonders?
“The ever-increasing demand for wireless communication has given a boost to software-defined radio development. In this article, we present a novel approach aimed at further integrating the radio on a single chip, while allowing for ultra-low supply voltage. Compared to earlier work [1][2], our approach differs and is demonstrated on a test chip, allowing for a fair comparison with other techniques.”
This is a typical introduction of a scientific article. The reader is a highly educated professional and is eager to understand what was done and why. The reader will sit down, concentrate and try to learn something new from it. It may look boring to outsiders (who have already stopped reading this column anyway), but it’s the tone we all use for this kind of communication. And it works!
How different this is in the communication of political leaders these days. They clearly employ a very different tone, especially those considered populist. The concept of this approach has been investigated by the American psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. People like to believe they make rational decisions, while, in fact, they’re using the so-called “system 1” of their brain. This part manifests our intuition and feelings. 98 percent of our brain energy is spent here. System 2 is the rational and analytical part. We often make decisions with system 1 and rationalize them afterward with system 2. The introduction of the fictive article above is targeting system 2. And this is fine, as it’s being reviewed and judged by peers who also use system 2.
What if we want to draw attention to our article through system 1 populist-style? Here we go!
“Many so-called researchers have worked on wireless communication. Some idiots have done prior work [1][2], but what we do is much better. Did you know that the authors of [1] are from a woke university with many foreign students? The other paper [2] is also problematic, as it discusses various types of transistors, including low-threshold voltage, high-threshold voltage, ultra-low-threshold voltage, n-MOS, p-MOS and even bipolar. That’s wrong. There are only two types of transistors: n-MOS and p-MOS. So [2] is a terrible paper as well. In our design, we’ve done it much better. When the chip returned from our domestic factory, we packaged it for mounting on a printed circuit board. I needed holes for the connectors on the board. I said: drill, baby, drill! The holes were just perfect. The best holes you’ve ever seen. I’ve also found an alternative measurement method. Very alternative, much better.”
I’m exaggerating. I hope I didn’t insult anyone. I wanted to show how very differently we communicate in different situations, and how these styles co-exist. How big parts of our population vote for the populist, as a result of their systems 1 being targeted. Even if they know that things are incorrect and overinflated, system 2 has a hard time overriding system 1. This style has now been adopted by many politicians, including those who were once moderate in their language. I can see a clear shift at least.
I’m glad that in the science and technology community, we’re still respectful and aim for honesty. Cheating and tweaking are generally not acceptable methods. However, I do fear that if it’s accepted that our leaders get away with not always telling the truth, or sometimes even clearly lying and getting away with it, that this will affect the behavior of the next generation of scientists.
I’ll continue to drill my students on writing in a transparent, fair and honest style. Call it boring, but it works.
