I have discovered something- I greatly approve of the voice and tone used in journal articles from 1950 and earlier. By modern standards these articles are considered inferior. They often trumpet some cause or another that was found to be wrong, touchingly or ironically naive or just plain nationalistic tripe. They are less peppered with citations and the research and theories is never cutting edge.
They’re also much more clear in word choice, less likely to waste a lot of time arguing with other peers writing on the subject (And lest you think that controversy makes modern writers argue harder and better, I’ve encountered plenty of papers where they mention the other side’s claims and wave them off as irrelevant without bothering to state why) and I’ve never seen a paper from the turn of the previous century announce ‘more research needed, couldn’t reach a conclusion’, while many of my political theory papers do just that, making me wonder what relevance they had at all, if all they could present was a ‘dog ate my homework’ style excuse to why I floundered through two decades worth of their careful notes on academic cat fights.
The worst a paper from the forties will do will say ‘we must wait and see, to find out if I am correct’. I’d be inclined to pass this off as an arts students’ curse, were it not for distressing reports from Engineering. A gentleman of great esteem to me, well placed in graduate school and soon to be a master in his field, says something similar about incomprehensible modern papers. It is not uncommon to receive something so wound up in jargon and theory that the only way to understand it to backtrack through the citations until you’re several decades before the time of publication and find the work of the (now probably deceased) person who made the observations that got this particular cascade of research going.
And then there are the ESL papers that abound in science. Do not mistake my intent, for as someone who is still trying to muster bilingual, I greatly respect anyone who’s not just a scientist but a polyglot. I’m very privileged by birth to have been born a native English speaker in a world where imperialism and trade domination have foisted my mother tongue off on everyone else. But would it tax a journal unduly to hire a few translation specializing editors to gently massage the twisted syntax into something approaching readable? If you are a brilliant researcher in say, Slovakia or Tanzania, it is sad that your very well documented double blind rat studies into the nature of the u quark in aluminum rich bird baths can’t be dusted up a little by someone who specializes in the language. Your ideas should not have to wrestle with your writing ability.