I posted this (or a version of it) over at Lablit but I wanted to post here too. I’m genuinly interested in your opinions of this:

I was reading That Other Magazine today, as I am won’t to do of a weekend. I found a funny letter to the editor, and was reminded of some silliness over in the Lablit Forums

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>Mad Dan Eccles
I don’t know how we got this commercial management bullshit in here. Someone must have left the door open. Tiddles, you’re closest: be a good chap and close it, will you?

>tideliar
Let me dovetail this argument so we’re thinking “inside” the box again. If we don’t non-verbally self-communicate before digitally opinon rendering, we could generate a negative halo effect.

OK?
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To quote the authors of the letter,

Many public health initiatives cite the need for transparency in research…However, transparency becomes more challenging as the language of international health becomes increasingly convoluted.The terminology used in the field of public health…is nearly incomprehensible. Commonplace vocabulary includes “capacity-strengthening,” “harmonization and alignment,” [and] developing the “fiscal space” … what do these terms actually mean?

They go on to demonstrate this is in practice using The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s Guidelines for Proposals (to normal people who might be reading this, this is the document that helps you prepare the documents you need to submit to try and get a grant. It’s a horrible procedure at the best of times) by giving the standard response to the question “What is meant by ‘technical and management assistance’?”

“This phrase is intended to capture relevant forward-looking activities and costs identified as being appropriate to support and manage efficient, effective, equitable, and transparent implementation arrangements”

Which obviously makes even less bloody sense than “technical & management assistance” did. It seems that the lingo-dancers who previously entertained us through the exploits of Dilbert et al. have now crawled so deep into the guts of the government machine they have infested the workings of the public health services.

the authors continue & conclude with this warning note…
Applicants who use these terms are often successful. Large amounts of money have become available for research that involves important, expensive, but often ill-defined areas such as “minimizing the knowledge gap”. As a result, complexity and imprecision usually prevail.

Personally, I find this very upsetting because it seems to go against the clarity and lack of obfuscation we are supposed to pride ourselves in. There is the usual, eternal argument of “general” clarity in scientific writing; passive vs. active voice etc., but this seems, to me, to take it a step too far.

Does anyone have any examples of this nonsense? Where deliberately un-conflating the brevity of your message-rendering has positively outcomed a fiscal-sourcing exercise?