I think this is a general cultural phenomenon not specific to the sciences- people are told they need to be aggressively confident to be taken seriously. Even as a kid parents and teachers will suggest to kids to edit words expressing uncertainty out of their writing. They are coached to talk like that when public speaking, at job interviews, and even dating. As a scientist- I also think papers and grant applications…
> Even as a kid parents and teachers will suggest to kids to edit words expressing uncertainty out of their writing. They are coached to talk like that when public speaking, at job interviews, and even dating. That's the first time I'm hearing this and it's certainly not something I've ever observed. In this broad generally, I cannot believe that this statement is true.
But modern writing instruction tend to prioritize precise verbs and nouns (choose the most precise word) and takes a very critical eye towards adverbs, adjectives, or prepositional phrases that might simply contribute to cadence, affect, and voice. I find it really hostile to style and readability, but it's easy to evaluate in education because you can just call out the flavoring bits as errors and point to a more precise dictionary word for what's left. Plus, it projects objectivity simply in it being "the most right way" to write, leaving the dirty mess of subjectivity, character, and humanity out of the classroom.
But the relevant end result of all that is that there's very little room for qualifiers or tentatitiveness, as those are usually expressed exactly in those subtle modifiers that people are trained to exclude.
And then this does end up coinciding with a truth of rhetoric, which is that -- much of the time -- the receiver of speech or writing will implicitly accept whatever authority and surety you project. If you sound sure, you must be sure, and if you're so sure, you must have reason to be, so you're probably right.
Put these together, and you get dull, dense technical writing with authoritative, objective tone and people are too overwhelmed and passive to bother parsing it enough challenge it.