Confessing Evangelical

A top scientist (R) taking the credit for work done by his research student (L).

The youngsters among you may have difficulty appreciating this, but there was time not so long ago when the world-wide web was such a new thing for most of us that newspapers could fill regular columns with examples of the wild'n'wacky material you could find on that there infoweb. Redneck jokes, that sort of thing.

One that I greatly enjoyed when it was published in the Guardian in about 1997, and have kept meaning to search out from time to time ever since, is the following guide to terminology used in scientific papers (which I've now found here):

A Guide To Effective Scientific Communication

"It has long been known."
I haven't bothered to look up the reference.

"It is believed."
I think.

"It is generally believed."
A couple of other guys think so too.

"It is not unreasonable to assume."
If you believe this, you'll believe anything.

"Of great theoretical importance."
I find it kind of interesting.

"Of great practical importance."
I can get some mileage out of it.

"Typical results are shown."
The best results are shown.

"Three samples were chosen for study."
The others didn't make sense, so we ignored them.

"The four hour sample was not studied."
I dropped it on the floor.

"The four hour determination may not be significant."
I dropped it on the floor but scooped most of it up.

"The significance of these results is unclear."
Look at the pretty artifact!

"It has not been possible to provide definitive answers."
The experiment was negative, but at least I can publish the data somewhere.

"Correct within an order of magnitude."
Wrong.

"It might be argued that..."
I have such a good answer for this objection that I shall now raise it.

"Much additional work will be required."
This paper isn't very good, but neither are all the others in this miserable field.

"These investigations proved highly rewarding."
My grant is going to be renewed.

"I thank X for assistance with the experiments and Y for useful discussions on the interpretation of the data."
X did the experiment and Y explained it to me.