Remove the zombies from research

“Bringing research to life”.

Ick.

There are over 20,000 results in Google for this horrible, horrible cliche.

And it’s completely meaningless.

Was the research dead beforehand? Have a couple of verbatim quotes and vox pop videos literally brought sentience to the project?

Coming at it from the opposite angle, the expression is quite Stalinistic – “One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic”

But mainly, it is just an excuse for poor communicators unable to make data or research interesting, relevant or memorable.

So, please, no more playing God and no more bringing zombies back from the dead. Find a way to let the work speak for itself.

sk

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcmhitchhiker/

NB: I know that zombies are technically undead and a better analogy would have been Frankenstein’s monster, but when the options are comparing respondents to gormless, instinctive fools or a vengeful yet misunderstood creature, what are you going to do?