Research papers used to have style. What happened?

Big thanks to NewScience for sponsoring this essay (originally released 8/11/22). I am also cross-posting this over at the Seeds of Science substack (apologies to dual subscribers for the double post). The advocates of the new science in the seventeenth century so reacted against the excesses of stylistic artistry that a reluctance to use any artistry at all seems to have prevailed ever since. — Whitburn et al., 1978 Since the founding of the first scientific journal in 1665, there have been calls to do away with stylistic elements in favor of clarity, concision, and precision. In 1667, Thomas Sprat urged members of the Royal Society to “reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style; to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men delivered so many things, almost in an equal number of words.” Some 200 years later, Charles Darwin said much the same: “I think too much pains cannot be taken in making the style transparently clear and throwing eloquence

Big thanks to NewScience for sponsoring this essay (originally released 8/11/22). I am also cross-posting this over at the Seeds of Science substack (apologies to dual subscribers for the double post). The advocates of the new science in the seventeenth century so reacted against the excesses of stylistic artistry that a reluctance to use any artistry at all seems to have prevailed ever since. — Whitburn et al., 1978 Since the founding of the first scientific journal in 1665, there have been calls to do away with stylistic elements in favor of clarity, concision, and precision. In 1667, Thomas