Feb 07 2010
Introducing The Groany Awards
A huge pet peeve of mine is stupid writing. The most common form I notice is headlines with “clever” wordplay, but if you watch local news you will be flooded with the same kind of prose. Trite puns here, silly metaphors there, and clichés coming at you like chocolates down an assembly line toward a harried Lucille Ball . . . I don’t watch local news and a big reason is the lame writing.
After the break, a real alligator story with teeth . . . . Local humane society worker saves furry friends from sad end . . . .
Egads.
My peeve has motivated me to start a series of awards I’ll call not the Tonys but “the Groanys.” The criteria for nomination: science writing so pathetic it makes you groan, boom, it’s in the running for the year-end awards that will be determined by reader vote.
If you encounter anything Groany-worthy, please feel free to nominate it by sending it my way. I’m going to stick to science writing because that’s what I read the most, and because that’s where I find the use of dumb writing most egregious.
THE GROANYS: RECOGNIZING EXCELLENCE IN STUPID SCIENCE WRITING SINCE FEBRUARY, 2010
The get things going, here is the first nomination . . . . drum roll please . . . this headline discovered yesterday over at ScienceDaily:
Groan. Zen bats?! Oh please. Those bats are so enlightened, the fly by cosmic intuition. What, did the writer think that if you add “Zen” to anything it automatically makes it more mysterious and interesting?
And actually, the title is misleading: the bats do indeed aim. But what they do — that info buried down in the prose beneath the bogus intro, in the real science part — is alternately aim their echolocation “sound beam” to one side of their target and then the other. This helps them to better gauge “change in the relative position of the target to the bat.”
What the hell does Zen have to do with that? It seems quite advanced and strategic to me. Is that Zen? Here’s the Google dictionary definition of the term:
Zen or Zen Buddhism is a form of the Buddhist religion that concentrates on meditation rather than on studying religious writings.
And this element from Wikipedia:
Zen emphasizes experiential prajña-, particularly as realized in the form of meditation, in the attainment of enlightenment. As such, it de-emphasizes theoretical knowledge in favor of direct, experiential realization through meditation and dharma practice.
Hmm. Maybe the bats do their meditating while hanging upside down. But not in a full-lotus position. And maybe they contemplate the meaning of this koan: What is the sound of one wing flapping?
Such a shame. Interesting science news belittled with a stupid headline. What can you do but groan?
Nominate it for an award! Officially recognize the stupidity and draw attention to it.
Care to join me in celebrating lame writing in the sciences?
