Neuroskeptic asked
why Social Scientists don’t want to be read. Fair do’s – it was a pretty flabby
abstract that could have been written by a UK science journalist who was
trained in Eng Lit and media studies and hadn’t seen science since they were
asked to practice some Piagetian conservation tasks in kindergarten (perhaps that
might be more common than you think!).
After quoting the
abstract Neuroskeptic exclaimed: “Phew. Now I think it's fair to say that this is a typical
example of what might be called the "social sciences style" of
writing.” Perhaps the issue here is how we differentiate between a badly
written abstract and an inaccessible abstract. Psychology is a broad
discipline. It claims to span the “softer” areas of the social sciences,
through social and developmental cognition to experimental psychology, and then
on to neuroscience and the various fields of biology and genetics.
But what about neuroscience abstracts? I’m about to begin
a revision of my Psychopathology textbook and had made a decision to include
more clinical neuroscience (in an accessible way, of course). But do
neuroscientists write their abstracts in a way that gets across even the most
basic contribution to knowledge of their studies? Only to some privileged
audience.
I had a look at the most recent issue of the Journal of
Neuroscience, and chose an abstract at random. Here it is:
ΔFosB, a Fosb
gene product, is induced in nucleus accumbens (NAc) and caudate–putamen (CPu)
by repeated exposure to drugs of abuse such as cocaine. This induction
contributes to aberrant patterns of gene expression and behavioral
abnormalities seen with repeated drug exposure. Here, we assessed whether a
remote history of cocaine exposure in rats might alter inducibility of the Fosb
gene elicited by subsequent drug exposure. We show that prior chronic cocaine
administration, followed by extended withdrawal, increases inducibility of Fosb
in NAc, as evidenced by greater acute induction of ΔFosB mRNA and faster
accumulation of ΔFosB protein after repeated cocaine reexposure. No such primed
Fosb induction was observed in CPu; in fact, subsequent acute induction
of ΔFosB mRNA was suppressed in CPu. These abnormal patterns of Fosb
expression are associated with chromatin modifications at the Fosb gene
promoter. Prior chronic cocaine administration induces a long-lasting increase
in RNA polymerase II (Pol II) binding at the Fosb promoter in NAc only,
suggesting that Pol II “stalling” primes Fosb for induction in this
region upon reexposure to cocaine. A cocaine challenge then triggers the
release of Pol II from the gene promoter, allowing for more rapid Fosb
transcription. A cocaine challenge also decreases repressive histone
modifications at the Fosb promoter in NAc, but increases such repressive
marks and decreases activating marks in CPu. These results provide new insight
into the chromatin dynamics at the Fosb promoter and reveal a novel
mechanism for primed Fosb induction in NAc upon reexposure to cocaine.
Luckily,
Neuroskeptic was able to translate and rewrite the Social Science abstract, but
I have no idea what this study might have made to the understanding of cocaine
addiction in particular and substance abuse in general.
A study like this
may quite reasonably have been written in the jargonized style understood by
all those familiar with neuroscience as it is written in the Journal of
Neuroscience – but it is not accessible beyond that audience. The same might be
true of the Social Science abstract quoted by Neuroskeptic – it could be argued
that much of the language was couched in social science jargon with terms like
“thematic analysis” and “hegemonic masculinities” to name but two. I would have
liked to have written an unjargonized summary of the neuroscience abstract I’ve
quoted (just like Neuroskeptic did with the Social Science abstract). Neuroskeptic
was able to do that but with the neuroscience abstract I’m completely stumped!
If there’s a moral
here, it’s maybe about neuroscientists belittling social science because of its
lack of preciseness, but conversely is neuroscience perpetuating its scientific
elitism through the impenetrability of its jargon. How on earth am I able to
decide if a neuroscience abstract is a bad abstract (and don’t say go and learn
some neuroscience, because if you’re a neuroscientist I might say go and learn
some social psychology)?!
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Follow me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/GrahamCLDavey
