In the area of academia, there must emphasis not only on the acquisition of knowledge, but also on the development of the ability to evaluate constantly changing information. My mother used to play golf wearing bright red pants with three other women, one whose name was Selma. But she got mad and decided they were so loud it just wasn't worth the embarrassment any longer. Try to avoid passive verbs. Let verbs do the work for you.
Passive voice is at times an unavoidable problem in academic writing.
But that's no excuse for leaving out information, boring your reader to death, or confusing the heck out of your readers. The cat was kicked. A kicking occurred to the cat. It was observed that the cat was the recipient of a kick. Those respondents who indicated that they witnessed the event indicated that a cat seemed to have been kicked.