Having worked in Academia, charts are often used to reveal trends in large data sets. This is particularly true these days when the data is gigabytes of multi-dimensional measurements that require processing to derive the underlying properties. The only good way to present data like this is in charts.
Graphics are now very important to presenting your science! The results can't speak for themselves, because no one can understand them in less than a few days of study, so they need a translator.
Sometimes people do create the equivalent of link-bait info-graphics that do their best to make a small result look large. It's usually balanced by the rest of the paper being light on details.
These infographics are just the newest version of sound-bytes and headlines. They don't tell the whole story, but they tell enough that you can tell your friends and pass out the link, and feel like you know the subject without having to spend more than 5 minutes reading. What we're missing is the balance of listing methodology and explicitly listing sources. There's little to no onus on the publisher to fact-check their data.
As long as we live in a society with 1-minute clips on the evening news, we'll have crappy infographics.
Graphics are now very important to presenting your science! The results can't speak for themselves, because no one can understand them in less than a few days of study, so they need a translator.
Sometimes people do create the equivalent of link-bait info-graphics that do their best to make a small result look large. It's usually balanced by the rest of the paper being light on details.
These infographics are just the newest version of sound-bytes and headlines. They don't tell the whole story, but they tell enough that you can tell your friends and pass out the link, and feel like you know the subject without having to spend more than 5 minutes reading. What we're missing is the balance of listing methodology and explicitly listing sources. There's little to no onus on the publisher to fact-check their data.
As long as we live in a society with 1-minute clips on the evening news, we'll have crappy infographics.