A Key to Scientific Research Literature Lingo

to describe data distributions, error analysis, and confidence intervals

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1. It has long been known that...	I haven't bothered to look up the original reference, but...
2. Of great theoretical and practical importance	Interesting to me
3. While it has not been possible to provide answers to these questions...	The experiment didn't work out but I figured I could at least get a publication out of it
4. The W-Fb System was chosen as especially suitable to show the predicted behavior	The fellow in the next lab had some already made up
5. Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study	The results on the others didn't make sense
6. Accidentally strained during mounting	Dropped on the floor
7. Handled with extreme care throughout the experiment	Not dropped on the floor
8. Typical results are shown	The best results are shown
9. Agreement with the predicted curve is: excellent good satisfactory fair	fair poor doubtful imaginary
10. It is suggested that... It is believed that... It may be that...	I think that...
11. It is generally believed that...	A couple of other guys think so too
12. It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding...	I don't understand it...
13. Unfortunately, a quantitive theory to account for these results has not been formulated	Neither does anybody else
14. Correct within an order of magnitude...	Wrong
15. Thanks are due to Joe Glots for assistance with the experiment and to John Doe for valuable discussion...	Glots did the work and Doe explained what it meant

(Original souce: unknown)

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User Submitted Lingo

In Print...	What it Means	The Correct Interpretation?	Percent Who agree
It is widely known that...	Wikipedia says so	yes no	100%
....following the published procedure....	We aren't sure how we finally got it to work....	yes no	100%
NMR was complicated	The NMR spectra looked like a polygraph test	yes no	96%
Data not shown	Data too screwed up to show	yes no	92%
The reaction doesn%B4t carry out as a result of a steric hindrance between...	No remote idea of what happen...	yes no	68%
Yields were moderate at best	We got 25%25 once.	yes no	52%
a purified sample melted at 156.7'C	after 37 recrystallizations we managed to get an mp of 155-160'C	yes no	40%

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