Why Do So Many in the Life Sciences Feel Document Language Has to Be Complicated to Be Good?

Not too long ago I was working on a client project related to improving the communication quality of clinical study protocols. At project initiation we did a document assessment of communication quality on six recently completed protocols. One of my consulting colleagues framed a very high-level assessment of the communication quality of these documents. Her assessment can be summarized as follows—it appears the authors of these protocols assume their reading audience will start reading the document in serial progression from page one to page n, have a high command of the English language, enjoy reading long, dense narrative passages, and have exquisite memories.


In reality, the targeted reading audience for these documents—clinical study site investigators and managers, as well as members of Institutional Review Boards—clearly do not prefer to read documents structured in such a manner. Who would?

We took one of the protocols and restructured the document to optimize communication quality. We applied many of tenets espoused by the “plain language” movement that has received considerable traction within the many offices of the United States Federal Government. Here’s the link: http://www.plainlanguage.gov

The model protocol was reviewed by our client sponsor and she found the document to be “not scientific enough.” It looked too different than what she was used to. Of course, what she was used to was protocols containing long dense narratives, protocols making ineffectual assignment of agency to various parties participating in the conduct of clinical research; protocols that treat words like “should” and “must” as synonyms; and protocols that assume all users of the document have English as their mother tongue.

Why do so many authors in the life sciences remain firm believers in the notion that scientific discourse has to be complicated to be good? The arguments against plain language in scientific documents do not hold water—that plain language cannot be used with a clinical and technical reading audience, that plain language oversimplifies intentions and meaning, and that plain language is not precise. Check out this list of articles supporting the use of plain language on the plainlanguage.gov website.


Originally published on our Knowledge Management blog