[quaquaqua1]

I am a native English speaker who graduated with a 3.8 GPA in History from a world Top 30 university.

I still had to use a dictionary to understand what "subserves" means in this context.

Our language is so hilariously broken with all of the "aliasing" that is used by people who want to make themselves sound smarter.

What we should do instead is try to make sure other people can understand what we are trying to say.

[throwanem]

I'm another native speaker who graduated high school more by dint of luck and pity than for any other reason, and then went to work instead of college. Between the context and the similarity with the adjective "subservient", "subserves" proved trivial to parse, and I haven't yet been able to come up with another expression of the same concept that is also as concise. In any case, it seems unlikely that educational attainment is all that useful an indicator here.

In general writing, your point has merit. In the title of an academic paper published in a journal of philosophy, I don't know that the strictures and desiderata of general writing wholly apply.

[quaquaqua1]

"A hypothesis that if one touches their face, they are more likely to smell themselves as well"

is an infinitely clearer title, in my opinion.

If your goal is for only 5 people to understand you and think you are cool, then it's no surprise why we have academic titles like

"Embodied intersectionality and the intersectional management of hotel labour: the everyday experiences of social differentiation in customer‐oriented work"

[throwanem]

The purpose of academic publication is to communicate with others in the same field, where the terminology of art is shared among all. Not having acquainted yourself with a given field's specific lexicon, why would you expect to understand without effort the meaning of titles that make heavy use of it?

For that matter, not being a participant in the work of which these publications constitute a part, why insist that those who do participate in it to talk with one another in the same language they'd use to make their work understandable to a lay audience such as yourself?

None of this seems very reasonable to me. You've done a splendid job of making clear that you value your own opinion in such matters quite highly, but you've left much to be desired in explaining why anyone else should do the same.

[DominikPeters]

“subserves” -> “is for” could fit

[throwanem]

I'd have gone with "supports", maybe, but the connotation is different; "subserves" says self-smelling is a major purpose of self-face-touching, "supports" suggests the association may be coincidental. Since the paper's claim appears to be the former, it makes sense to use the stronger word in the title, too.