I mean, hardly anyone disagrees with the need for clarity.<p>However, when it comes to academic writing, I feel the author doesn't quite capture the complex (heh) reality.<p>First, all academics who get at least some sort of coaching in writing learn more of less the same thing: Write simple and clear sentences and put them in an understandable order. There's a clear consensus on what makes a good paper, and complexity isn't one of them.
So, at least some opaque papers are most likely the result of academics who either received little training in writing, or find it difficult.<p>However, the author claims that academics write strategically to obscure their work. This may be true, but it is not a good strategy. What you learn, hopefully during your PhD, is that you do not want to make your reviewers feel stupid. In fact, you do not want to inconvenience them at all if you can help it.
The reason is quite simple: In many academic fields, it's not simply your results that guarantee a publication. For most of us, scientific progress is made in small pieces, and we have to convince the reviewers that these small pieces warrant publication.
The quickest way to get your paper rejected is to write opaquely. This is probably exactly what lead to the author writing their article. Read something that's meandering, unclear or opaque, and you don't think its "smart" or "deep". That's rarely how English works. Instead, it'll annoy you, and you go and write about it on your blog. Now think what this means if you face anonymous reviewers.<p>That leaves us with a small percentage of people who, indeed, use language to obscure shortcomings of their work. This is very difficult, and risky! Who knows what the reviewers are thinking? Do they see through you and reject your paper? Do they get confused and reject your paper?
It can be done, but I wouldn't say it is a good strategy nor something that would be too prevalent.<p>The reality is probably this: Despite having "being a writer" in your implicit job description, most academics are simply bad at writing. Take me, for example. I am not a native English speaker, and I also received my first education on academic writing far too late. If I could write clearer, simpler and better, I would. It would only help me. However, English is a funny language, believe it or not. It's easy to learn, but difficult to master. It lends itself to clarity, and yet makes that same clarity fickle and difficult to achieve.<p>So, dear annoyed native English speakers: We academics apologize.