Wednesday, January 11, 2012

What you end up writing in papers....and what you actually mean part II

Esmeralda (she has a blog) posted this in the comments to this post. I think it deserves a post of its own. 

The author writes:
It is believed.
REALLY means:
I think.

The author writes:
It is generally believed.
REALLY means:
A couple of other guys think so too.

The author writes:
It is not unreasonable to assume.
REALLY means:
If you believe this, you'll believe anything.

The author writes:
Of great theoretical importance.
REALLY means:
I find it kind of interesting.

The author writes:
Of great practical importance.
REALLY means:
I can get some mileage out of it.

The author writes:
The 4 hour sample was not studied.
REALLY means:
I dropped it on the floor.

The author writes:
The 4 hour determination may not be significant.
REALLY means:
I dropped it on the floor, but scooped most of it up.

The author writes:
The significance of these results is unclear.
REALLY means:
Look at the pretty artifact.

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

The author writes:
It might be argued that.
REALLY means:
I have such a good answer for that objection that I shall now raise it.

The author writes:
Much additional work will be required.
REALLY means:
This paper is not very good, but neither are all the others in this miserable field.

The author writes:
These investigations proved highly rewarding.
REALLY means:
My grant is going to be renewed.

2 comments:

  1. Cool, thanks Mojca for the link to my blog Science Is So Sexy (as I'm sure Mojca agrees), I really appreciate :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha, Kudos on "This paper is not very good, but neither are all the others in this miserable field." :D

    ReplyDelete