You mean journalistic articles, not scientific/published "articles". Also, to paint all journalistic articles as white sugar is simply flat-out wrong. There are numerous fantastically written journalistic articles written by fantastic book writers. These can be jumping-off points to then purchase a book or find that scientific publication.

I think it's better just to call them layman's writing instead of white sugar, as processed sugar is basically a toxin. Understanding layman's writing will get you nowhere in the real world, except as a stepping-stone to further knowledge. Sugar, on the other hand, is actively harming people and is not a stepping-stone to healthy living.

There's a tremendous amount of bad scientific writing as well. Much of induced by publish-or-perish, grant-chasing, and signalling dynamics.

For journalism, relevant, incisive, investigative journalism is gold.

Much of what's written is simple pro-forma, filler, stenography, or worst of all: republished press releases -- APR and VPR (audio / video press release) for radio and television, the original "fake news": https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news

A key question for me is whether the article intends principally to inform rather than persuade or distract. Virtually all current business, "style", entertainment/culture, and big-ticket sales (real estate, autos, travel) "reporting" is thinly veiled advertising. A large fraction of political coverage is either stenography or persuasive rhetoric.

Writing with the reader in mind, or at least with the writer's (or client's) ego / wallet, out of mind, is rare.

Under your definition, I'd classify most magazine and news articles as processed sugar. It is toxic, to the extent that clickbait headlines, inaccuracies, errors and lies in articles, convey negative knowledge to the reader.

I'd say popular magazine articles and research articles share similar demerits, just from different perspectives. The popular article is shallow and broad and overspimplified while the research article is deep and narrow and usually overcomplicated.

Thus both provide a less than ideal introduction into any novel subject, though I see most popular articles as less 'toxic' than most research articles, especially towards encouraging further interest in the neophyte reader.

Real reason is that actual function of that browsing is relax, not bothering with difficult parts, getting thrill or other emotional reaction and forgetting next day. Following impulses and reading something easy to read. Meanwhile articles on Europe’s political history or the nature of quasars are education - fundamentally different mental task.

I think better than a book is just being curious about the world around you. Why does only my front car window have frost on it? Why does my granola bar wrapper emit light when I open it under my covers? You are guarenteed to learn relevant things that change your worldview instead of relying on whatever you are told to be curious about. Think for yourself, but you should also be curious for yourself.

And then when you try to google for information on these things, you end up reading the very same short articles.

This morning my neighbor's car had frost on it, but my car didn't. I thought about it for a good chunk of my commute!

You haven't read some of the amazing books that are out there if you've got that attitude.

I disagree, an article from a good subject/specialized encyclopedia (as opposed to a general encyclopedia) is an excellent introduction to a topic and will be written by scholars in that field.

I think by "article", the comment refers to article like in news or in some general audience site, not on specialized place.

There are news articles about the political history of Europe?

No, and that's the problem. We crave the dopamine thrill of "news", but history would be much more useful to our understanding of our world.

Did the parent gave the impression that he meant encyclopaedia articles?

I call my blog posts articles.

They take multiple months of research.

What should I call them?

Blog posts occupy the space between tweets and papers. Higher quality blog posts can contain a lot of useful information, but can never replace an actual deep understanding of the topic. You couldn't expect readers of your blog posts to then go on to write a novel blog post of the same quality on the same topic.

Readers of one book can't write a book of the same quality on the same topic.

I don't frequently find myself needing that level of knowledge

Yours might be better than 99% of what gets read. Or it could be like a Marvel movie: a lot of hard work for you to create, but not substantially meaningful to a viewer.

OOC - could you share a link to your blog posts?

Check out Efficiency Is Everything

I just spent a few minutes poking around your website and I love that I was able to do that without a box popping up begging me to subscribe to some newsletter. How refreshing!

I'm not sure I fully agree. Someone who really knows their topic well and is skilled at explaining it can often explain in simple terms with relatively few words. Many papers on the other hand seem be written with filler either to put on airs or to make the paper appear to have more info than is actually there.

I know this is not true for all papers or topics but it does seem common enough that I run into it frequently.

Completely agree. I run Thinking About Things[1], an email newsletter with one interesting link every day, and the goal has always been to make the reader more curious about the topic and be motivated to find out more - not to satisfy an intellectual itch.

[1] https://www.thinking-about-things.com