Presence and consequences of positive words in scientific abstracts

[Anonymous No.15863260]

Increase of loaded language in scientific literature suggests decrease in honesty amongst authors of that literature

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-023-04864-6
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11192-023-04864-6.pdf

>Abstracts are the showcase of scientific studies, crafted to make an impression on the reader within a limited space and to determine the amount of attention each study receives. Systemic conditions in the sciences may change the expressive norm and incentive scientists to hype abstracts to promote their work and career. Previous studies found that terms such as “unprecedented”, “novel” and “unique” have been used increasingly in recent history, to describe one’s own research findings. The present study investigates the use of valence-loaded scientific jargon in the abstracts of scientific articles. Sentiment analysis with dictionaries specifically attuned to detect valence-loaded scientific jargon was employed to analyze more than 2,300,000 MEDLINE abstracts from the fields of psychology, biology, and physics. Results show that over the last four decades, abstracts have contained an increasing amount of valence-loaded scientific jargon, as previously observed in earlier studies. Moreover, our results reveal that the positive emotional content of abstracts is increasing in a way that cannot be accounted for by the increase in text length, which has also been observed in the same time period. There were small differences between scientific disciplines. A detailed analysis of the distribution of valence-loaded scientific jargon within abstracts reveals a strong concentration towards the end of the text. We discuss these results in light of psychological evidence relating positive emotions with the propensity to overestimate the value of information to inform judgment and the increase in the competition for attention due to a pressure to publish.

[Anonymous No.15863266]

>>15863260
Truth and science are antonyms.

[Anonymous No.15863522]

>>15863266
how shall we define each one of the following words?
>truth
>science
>antonym

[Anonymous No.15866129]

this graph tracks the rise in atheism during the same period that the rise in dishonest, manipulative use of language described in OP occurred

[Anonymous No.15871276]

>>15866129
certainly just a coincidence

[Anonymous No.15872352]

>>15871276
indubitably

[Anonymous No.15873620]

[Anonymous No.15874506]

>>15863260
that picrel is like a glossary of words that all mean the same thing, that the article you're reading is a lie

[Anonymous No.15874867]

>>15874506
"greater" shows a decline
i wonder why that word is denigrated in the communist lexicon

[Anonymous No.15875984]

>>15874867
strong and strongly both leveled off and started to drop in popularity as well

[Anonymous No.15876050]

>percent of papers
why is this relevant and total number of papers isn't
total number of papers probably grew significantly
what all this shows is that there's simply more people in science and even the stupider ones are allowed access to publish their shit

[Anonymous No.15876756]

>>15876050
they only examined a randomly selected subset of their initial sample

[Anonymous No.15876843]

OP's paper should have looked at the sentiment of (un)retracted papers. Dishonesty and hype are not necessarily connected.

[Anonymous No.15876848]

>>15863260
Anyone who has had the opportunity to compare the modern dreck graduate students are encouraged to drown the literature in to even modest (and forgotten) papers from the 90s and earlier can see a shift in tone. Modern papers read like an announcement from the HR department, just loaded with corporate buzzwords.

[Anonymous No.15878039]

>>15876848
The Bog bros eventually had their papers retracts because they were claimed to be just buzzword & jargon soup with no actual meaning. Sounds like the Bogs were just way ahead of the curve and now all papers are written to the Bogs' standards

[Anonymous No.15878057]

novel is by far the worst publication word, its literally why you are publishing you fagghot. Act like you been there before

[Anonymous No.15878704]

>>15878057
the funny thing about that is that if they really had discovered something that was uniquely exploitable or otherwise somehow new and useful, they wouldn't be publishing it, it would be kept secret so it could be used to turn a profit, so the use of that word in the context of academic publishing is always a falsehood, which is of course par for the course in academic publishing, its all falsehoods

[Anonymous No.15878796]

>>15878704
Skills are innate so teachers must be quacks.

[Anonymous No.15879914]

>>15878704
This, being published in the academic vanity press guarantees that something is not worth reading about. You will never learn anything of any value reading the replication crisis journals, they're a total waste of time

[Anonymous No.15880773]

>>15876843
>Dishonesty and hype are not necessarily connected.
yes they are

[Anonymous No.15881790]

>>15880773

imo it is possible to hype one's work without being dishonest if one truly believe in the merit of your work. Same with scientists. The problem is when hype is employed as a mechanism to generate unjustified attention. Some truly innovative papers (which are really rare) deserve to be hyped.

[Anonymous No.15882583]

>>15881790
meritorious work hypes itself

[Anonymous No.15882687]

>>15882583
I disagree. Doing high-quality, meritorius research is not guaranteed to get recognition (hype). If the description of the study is modest (and prosaic), fewer people will read and cite is, which is the current metric of success in science.

[Anonymous No.15882689]

>>15882687
If nobody reads or cares about it maybe your work wasn't valuable in the first place.

[Anonymous No.15882697]

>>15882689
>if
when

[Anonymous No.15884679]

>>15882697
sometimes scientists are able to get their mothers to read their publications