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In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

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Re: In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

#71

Post by ben_w »

mmooss wrote: post #36
dragonwriter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t want to get into religious debate, but you might want to re-read the Gospels - you are missing the fundamental message of Jesus, which has turned out to be extremely popular - arguably the most popular text and message in the world. You might want to reread the upthread context: I was discussing the role of humility “in concrete terms of actual people in terms of attracting a contemporary following” and dis…

Jesus's message of humility was clear. The rest is your speculation, 2000 years later, about what worked.

Jesus' very clear message of humility is published in a massive best-selling book that got gold filigree letters in the medieval manuscripts and which was promoted in buildings that were for a thousand or so years the largest and grandest that most people ever saw, and led to the creation of the famously wealthy Catholic church (whose stuff was famously confiscated by Henry VIII when he needed more gold) led by popes whose desire for expensive art led to the sale of indulgences that led to Martin Luther and a massive europe-wide series of conflicts, and also led to the less famous but more infamous Knights Templar who didn't survive having their money taken.

Parable of the sower comes to mind: hear the word, but did not follow it.

Except the popularity in that era was due to all the powerful people saying it proved their right to absolute power and sometimes made other religions (including denominations of Christianity) illegal, and popularity waned rapidly as it stopped being required.

Actually reading the bible is a big part of why I switched from Catholic to Wicca as a teen before deciding it was probably all ahistorical anyway.

Re: In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

#72

Post by jackcviers3 »

gryn wrote: post #30
jackcviers3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one teacher and several profs told me, "You don't need to say, 'I think', because the fact that you are saying or writing it means that you think it". In other words, if you are uncertain, don't express the idea, because no amount of verbal hedging will protect you if you express something that is incorrect. However, the best way to get the correct idea if you are wrong and unsure is to confidently propose your id…

writing 'I think X', 'there a chance that X' instead of 'X is', 'I know that X' > if you are uncertain, don't express the idea, because no amount of verbal hedging will protect you if you express something that is incorrect. The problem with this is with the target audience of your writing, if you're assuming an adversarial audience vs a cooperative one. the bigger and less self-filtered the audience is the more like…

Everyone has their threshold for how many times you are allowed to be incorrect within a given context, sure.

> adversarial audience... Yes. Even if the audience you target is small and on your side today, a successful piece of writing will gain an adversarial audience, eventually.

> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. - Cardinal Richelieu (apocryphal paraphrase from hearsay apparently but still a great quote).

Re: In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

#73

Post by amarcheschi »

gwervc wrote: post #66
amarcheschi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my professor at uni (he managed to talk to Bill gates to get Microsoft to fund his startup, which is now an established research center) told us that if we don't know something, being honest and saying you don't know it is usually a good sign. Be it at an oral exam, be it when you're answering question at a startup pitch (...) I really appreciated when a professor, when asked with a question he doesn't know, s…

In a way the school system teach people to fear not knowing something, because at an exam it mean getting a bad grade. At work, it is also often frown upon. This is indeed a problem in science since the goal is precisely to find more about unknowns.

I had another enlightened professor that also founded a startup that talked about how much is it frowned upon to admit to be wrong at work. Bear in mind in his opinion this is especially true for Italian workplaces, but I can imagine it can be somewhat true for other places as well. Knowing why things went wrong is much more useful than knowing who did it and pointing fingers to him/her

Re: In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

#74

Post by TomasBM »

mberlove wrote: post #61

This strikes a chord with me (not that I'm the only one). Every time I write longform, I intuitively want to include, "maybe", "might", "I think", but then axe them from my writing so as to not invite total dismissal. In the abstract the authors write "Among the existing studies, there is also divergent understandings." It'd be interesting to see the methodology of this paper (doesn't seem to have access without pay)…

Depends on what you're writing, I guess.

If you're writing a scientific article with the results of your research, your audience (i.e., reviewers and other readers, usually scientists) will expect you to have evidence for your claims. Any speculation or other "maybe's" should be kept in the sections like discussion or future work, or left out.

If you're writing something where opinions are accepted or even appreciated, like a position paper or a blog post, the audience should be aware that whatever you say is your interpretation anyway. But then, it also applies that some interpretations or guesses are more "educated" than others.

"Maybe" does sound too vague. Although it sounds like a language trick, I prefer to use a disclaimer at the beginning or "assume", "expect", "my understanding", to show that whatever follows is my opinion, but also that I think it's still valid and I'm willing to stand behind it.

Re: In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

#75

Post by tubalcain »

_yb2s wrote: post #65
tubalcain wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People misinterpret science as being a collection of facts discovered by authority figures rather than a process of questioning the validity of any claims made. It's almost as if the concept of science has turned into the religion of the atheist. Unquestionable, and dictated by more holy figures than them, in the form of scientists, and in some cases politicians, rather than clergy.

I can see how they came to see it this way, since that is how science was taught to me in public school... I only knew better because both of my parents were scientists, and I grew up helping them with their research. I think that could be changed by changing how science is taught: give people the tools to experiment and reason, and figure out an answer on their own. I'd like to see more kids volunteering to work wit…

Maybe that's why people are like that, but I think it's more baked into most people than we care to admit. I think part of our human wiring is to have faith. It used to be in deities, now it is in "science!" Humans, most of them anyway, are also wired to follow authority blindly. I really don't think there's any way around it. It's not that people refuse to be skeptical, it's that they are probably incapable of it.

Re: In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

#76

Post by mmooss »

ben_w wrote: post #71
mmooss wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus's message of humility was clear. The rest is your speculation, 2000 years later, about what worked.

Jesus' very clear message of humility is published in a massive best-selling book that got gold filigree letters in the medieval manuscripts and which was promoted in buildings that were for a thousand or so years the largest and grandest that most people ever saw, and led to the creation of the famously wealthy Catholic church (whose stuff was famously confiscated by Henry VIII when he needed more gold) led by popes…

(I'm not trying to sell Jesus or Christianity; I'm just talking factually about the text of the Gospels. For those unfamilar - the Gospels are the first four books of the New Testament, in which the authors describe Jesus' actual words and life, often quoting Jesus. The rest of the New Testament is other people's responses to about Jesus and Christianity.)

As I understand it: Humans are complicated, as Jesus depicted them. They are both terminally weak and flawed, and there is also good and justice and mercy in them - the many angels of our natures. Jesus ministered to the weak and flawed, not the good and just, certainly not to the perfect. It's a message of love to people who sin, which is pretty much everyone; Jesus didn't expect differently. His message was to love the sinners and for the sinners to accept his love.

All human institutions are flawed and to a degree corrupt; they are run by sinners. I'm not defending the Catholic Church or any church or religion, my point is that if we throw out the good when there are flaws, major flaws, we are left with nothing. Not even ourselves.

Re: In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

#77

Post by Thertzlor »

euroderf wrote: post #50
energy123 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is the English language doesn't have tools to express uncertainty without adding verbosity. For example, take what I said here, my sentence length increased by 25% by saying "part of it is" to communicate uncertainty. This gets tiring quickly for both the writer and reader. It becomes boilerplate.

> the English language doesn't have tools to express uncertainty without adding verbosity Well, there's always irony quotes. For example: The new Apple lineup will "amaze".

[dead]

Re: In some scientific papers, words expressing uncertainty have decreased (2023)

#78

Post by patrakov »

This is not limited to science. This is a consequence of people relying on automated grammar and style-checking tools. For example, Grammarly always highlights the words and phrases indicating uncertainty in blue and suggests they be deleted.
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