A Guide to Effective Scientific Communication
P: Phrase T: Translation
P: It has long been known
T: I haven’t bothered to look up the reference
P: It is believed
T: I think
P: It is generally believed
T: A couple of other guys think so too
P: It is not unreasonable to assume
T: If you believe this, you’ll believe anything
P: Of great theoretical importance
T: I find it kind of interesting
P: Of great practical importance
T: I can get some mileage out of it
P: Typical results are shown
T: The best results are shown
P: 3 samples were chosen for further study
T: The others didn’t make sense, so we ignored them
P: The 4 hour sample was not studied
T: I dropped it on the floor
P: The 4 hour determination may not be significant
T: I dropped it on the floor, but scooped most of it up
P: The significance of these results is unclear
T: Look at the pretty artifact
P: It has not been possible to provide definitive answers
T: The experiment was negative, but at least I can publish the data somewhere
P: Correct within an order of magnitude
T: Wrong
P: It might be argued that
T: I have such a good answer for this objection that I shall now raise it
P: Much additional work will be required
T: This paper is not very good, but neither are all the others in this miserable field
P: These investigations proved highly rewarding
T: My grant is going to be renewed
P: I thank X for assistance with the experiments and Y for useful discussions on the interpretation of the data
T: X did the experiment and Y explained it to me