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

3 samples were chosen for further study
The others didn't make sense, so we ignored them

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 is not 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

 

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