The confusion of tongues

By William R. Jones

For some time our lab conducted experiments using a particular sea drug, holothurin. We were getting nowhere with it; it affected the protozoan and the mouse little. We had collected every piece of English language literature available on its use.

I suggested to the primary investigator (P.I.) that we might submit a review to a renowned scientific journal on the present literature and use of holothurin. In this way, we could at least gain something from our futile efforts in the lab. He brushed the idea aside. I painstakingly continued collecting papers (very limited databases existed back then) from Russians who were working with holothurin they obtained from the Caspian salt lake and Black Sea.

Finally locating a foreign grad student who might translate for me, I wanted to be sure not to miss anything should the P.I. be convinced in the writing of the review.

One calendar morning, stopping by to pick up my latest searches from the research librarian, lo and behold, there was from India a review on holothurin written by alleged former colleagues and collaborators of the P.I. Displeased, I tossed it on his desk. He seemed not in the least astonished. Feeling he sold us out, I no longer felt xenophilic. By the way, that published review was not comprehensive and did not include even one Russian citation.

Anyway, it all fell into the category of the 90 percent insignificant publications. Useless knowledge, perhaps having some usefulness, but that’s another story. Today, there are no worries about retrieval of publications in Russian or any other language for that matter. There are databases available like Google Scholar, PeerJ, PLOS One and “Web of Science,” and even translation services and other linguistic mediators.

In October 1933, one theoretical physicist whom you know, settled at 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, N.J. The trend from then on was toward English as the unifying language of science. However, during the Cold War much of science was published in Russian. As the Soviet Union fell into gradual deterioration and collapsed, the use of Russian declined. According to one Princeton University expert, “by the mid-1990s, about 96 percent of the world’s scientific articles were written in English.” These days, he says, “publishing in English is almost not a choice.”

The use of English as a global scientific language presents certain drawbacks. One is possible bias, that is, overriding, rejecting, and marginalization of researchers working in languages other than English. “Many researchers simply stop reading work in other tongues, assuming that everything of merit appears only in the global tongue” (INSIDE HIGHER ED- Serena Golden). Nevertheless, minimally, the future will be bilingual and one of the languages will be English.

Korean researcher Dr. Hwang Kum-ju has written much about the English of science. She stated, “The reason that non-native English-speaking scientists have to use English, at a cost of extra time and effort, is closely related to their continued efforts to be recognized as having internationally compatible quality and to gain the highest possible reputation.” Thus, publishing in English will help one’s research become visible. Let’s hope that all works will be inclusive leaving no gaps in information and not neglective like the presented review on holothurin long, long ago.

The writer (wrjones@vsu.edu) is a Chemistry Lab Coordinator and Research Technician at Virginia State University.