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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)

#31

Post by energy123 »

_yb2s wrote: post #2

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…

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.

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

#32

Post by whatshisface »

hollerith wrote: post #14
thiagocmoraes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you american? As a non-american living in the US, the statement from parent post sounds about right to me. Culturally, people sound very confident, even when they have little to no confidence on the content.

This American agrees. I intentionally make my public writings much more confident than my private writings. If I don't, people just ignore me.

I remember a teacher telling me to delete every occurrence of "I think," because it's redundant to tell people you think what you're writing.

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

#33

Post by DiscourseFan »

_yb2s wrote: post #2

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…

Yes and no.

Often being trapped in indecision is a sign of fear and insecurity rather than calm consideration. But sometimes people go into things headstrong and lose because they didn't make any calculations beforehand. There's a balance, or maybe a dialectic, between thinking and non-thinking action.

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

#34

Post by makeitdouble »

jackcviers3 wrote: post #25
_yb2s wrote: post #2

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…

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…

> if you are uncertain, don't express the idea

A better interpretation is to express the uncertainty at its core, and not wrapped into your subjectiveness.

For instance if you read it in a publication and kinda agree but don't fully trust it, instead of "I think X" you could go with "Publication Y exposes the possibility of X"

The real point of the advice is to get rid of fluff, not remove nuance or valuable information.

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

#35

Post by nickpsecurity »

_yb2s wrote: post #2

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…

I think it’s a newer culture pushed by the media and universities to accept scientific claims without questioning them. They usually cite whatever they say without evidence. What a scientific consensus or even unnamed scientist say can be used to dismiss others’ points. It’s almost like they’re the clergy of today. Some are calling this “scientism.”

We need to go back to treating any claims with healthy skepticism, reviewing them, and phrasing things carefully to show the degree of certainty uncertainty involved. We need to protect the integrity of both science and scientific reporting. That’s better for us in the long-term.

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

#36

Post by mmooss »

dragonwriter wrote: post #26
mmooss wrote: post #22

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. > Very many of the Presidents before Trump were...not known for humility in their time. Who? What did they do? Nobody like Trump or other people I named.

> 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.

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

#37

Post by uolmir »

whatshisface wrote: post #32
hollerith wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This American agrees. I intentionally make my public writings much more confident than my private writings. If I don't, people just ignore me.

I remember a teacher telling me to delete every occurrence of "I think," because it's redundant to tell people you think what you're writing.

That's good advice in that context and speaks to the difference in standards of evidence between normal expository or persuasive writing in school and scientific writing. In a scientific paper if you assert something it's important to flag to the reader what kind of claim this is, eg something demonstrated by other research, something that directly follows from your evidence, or something that could possibly be true given prior knowledge and your evidence.

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

#39

Post by oceanplexian »

mmooss wrote: post #9
kleiba wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I was going to write the same thing as the GP, fwiw. Look at how many public figures embrace the extreme overconfidence as a mark of tactical genius: SBF, Musk, lots of other SV figures, Trump, etc. Humbleness, humility used to be admired. Can you imagine someone saying that now?

Musk is not a figurehead of confidence, and really is nothing like SBF. In fact, he’s regularly very direct about conveying the level of uncertainty when discussing the possibility of RUDs with Starship or being optimistic about deadlines for Tesla when he’s speaking in long form and not taken out of context with a sound bite.

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

#40

Post by stonethrowaway »

Tanoc wrote: post #11
bigs wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. At least in my western country, it has become almost expected that everyone is fully confident all the time. I’m someone who likes to deliberate on thoughts, take my time, listen to opinions and assess them, then provide my opinion (which may also change over time with more information or changing circumstances). I am humble, a listener, and don’t believe I know everything. I feel a little out of place in curr…

When I was younger I had a bad habit of taking what information I did know and then piecing it together to try and fill in what I didn't know, then stating that confidently. Many times I was wrong. In fact, most times I was wrong and not even close. But I was expected to be that way in order for people to listen to me. I was doing this almost until I was twenty because of that expectation. The one good thing that cam…

That is very much a normal human condition honestly. In my experience what I’m seeing from time to time is younger folks have way more confidence in things they’re wrong about than I did when I was their age. I had some confidence no doubt but ample room for error where I would run a “trust but verify” pattern on my own bullshit regularly. I learned from who knows what that it’s bon ton to say “I don’t know” so I got into the habit of withholding my theories in favour of yielding to the other parties. Of course it helps in tech and business to be discerning. But I’m seeing less of this and way more of baseless, unfounded conclusions that have not stemmed from deductive reasoning, conflicting research and so on but rather just-so statements and single-dimension emotional reflexes. It’s clear the presenter wholly lacks experience, but we play along because it’s amusing.

The hard part is articulating to someone to slow down because we run the risk of them being offended. But that’s a different thread altogether.

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