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Precision adverbs

An examiner of a scientific thesis wants a ban on words indicating a probability not entirely certain:

"Page N: 'Although the  correspondence between the XXX and YYY frameworks is not clear, it is likely that ...' Hmmm. Scientific sentences containing adverbs such as 'likely' (or 'very', 'hardly', 'quite', 'almost', 'nearly' ...) are highly likely to be not very scientific. Either write something concrete about the relationship between the XXX and the YYY, or don't write anything at all."

I expect the same precision is required in a humanities thesis. 

Published Monday, May 21, 2007 9:45 PM by robyn.owens
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# re: Precision adverbs

I just did a search for these six 'banned words' in my thesis. Fortunately, there was only one instance of three of them, and none of the other three. Two of those that remained I could express in another way. However, I have one instance of "likely" left. I say something to the effect of: "As XXX happens, the channel is increasingly likely to experience YYY". Thus I am referring to the probability of an event being raised because of something else occurring. Does this also fall under your 'banned words', or is it OK?

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 9:28 AM by wayne.griffiths

# re: Precision adverbs

Removing specualtion about the things that we don't yet understand would pretty much stop all scientific progress in it tracks.  The only way that we move forward to construct and test new hypotheses about the things that we don't yet understand is to use words like "likely and probably."

If we stop looking for suggesting reasons for things we don't understand then we stop progressing don't we... or have I missed something here?

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 10:12 AM by BCC

# re: Precision adverbs

Saying something is "likely" to happen is a statement of speculation and in the context given, not evidence-based. How likely is it to happen? Is the probability of experiencing YY  0.00001 or 1? What evidence was used to come to the conclusion that it is "likely" to happen? Were there experiments conducted? If so, what were the results that support the claim? It may be that you state these things elsewhere. If so, you can restate the sentence to be more specific. If not, it is highly likely that there is not much someone can do with a statement "As XXX happens, the channel is increasingly likely to experience YYY".

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 11:04 AM by david.glance

# re: Precision adverbs

The art of writing about imprecise things precisely is to properly embed them in probability theory. So it sounds like you have taken the right approach Wayne, especially if you can present evidence that the probability does increase.

And it turns out that imprecise writing is not tolerated in the humanities either; see http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17114

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 1:42 PM by robyn.owens

# re: Precision adverbs

I've noticed that my first year students do this a lot - might, perhaps, it could be said that etc.

I tend to overcompensate in the opposite direction - entirely, wholly, undoubtedly.

It's like in the early years we're afraid of committing to an idea, and need to cover our bases in case of failure ("I din't really mean that..."), and in postgrad we're desperately trying to convince ourselves our analysis is correct that we can't stand even the slightest whiff of doubt.

Time to find a compromise, eh?

Wednesday, June 06, 2007 11:59 AM by Sanna

# re: Precision adverbs

Here's another examiner on the same topic:

"The thesis is littered with terms such as 'at great depths', 'higher concentration', 'lower concentration' etc with little or no reporting of values. Such subjective, qualitative description of trends/systems has no place in scientific writing."

Friday, October 12, 2007 11:10 AM by robyn.owens

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