Papers have a tradition of violating the bottom line rule.
In a classic paper, one starts with the conclusion in the abstract, and then builds up an argument for it in the paper itself.
While that is how paper are structured, it is in my experience not how they are written. The abstract is written last, or at least after the results are known, and summarizes the rest of the paper.
The real problem is the difficulty in getting negative results published, which pushes authors to make things appear better than they really are or to hunt for positive aspects.
Yeah, that struck me as a “WTF?” I mean, it may certainly be the case the authors decide their bottom line before coming up with the evidence and arguments for it, but you can’t infer that from the fact that the abstract comes first and gives its conclusion—they’re not (or at least shouldn’t be) written in the order you read the paper.
I would much prefer that an abstract give the paper’s conclusion! I’ve seen too many abstracts that either leave it off, or leave out the key insight driving that conclusion, forcing me to dig through the paper, and generally defeating the purpose of it.
As someone who has written a few papers myself I fully agree. Just because the conclusion is in the abstract, doesn’t mean that one starts out with a conclusion in mind. The whole idea of the scientific method, hypothesis testing, etc. is to look at the data as objectively as possible. Of course, not all scientists follow the best practice, but this is what peer review is for (a word completely missing in the article).
Actually, it would be nice to have an abstract for the post “The Bottom Line” that tells you what the bottom line rule is without having to read the whole thing. It’s basically the confirmation bias, right?
Still the post makes a lot of good points about single-blind journals, paywall, etc. These are real problems that have to be solved to make science more accessible.
While that is how paper are structured, it is in my experience not how they are written. The abstract is written last, or at least after the results are known, and summarizes the rest of the paper.
The real problem is the difficulty in getting negative results published, which pushes authors to make things appear better than they really are or to hunt for positive aspects.
Yeah, that struck me as a “WTF?” I mean, it may certainly be the case the authors decide their bottom line before coming up with the evidence and arguments for it, but you can’t infer that from the fact that the abstract comes first and gives its conclusion—they’re not (or at least shouldn’t be) written in the order you read the paper.
I would much prefer that an abstract give the paper’s conclusion! I’ve seen too many abstracts that either leave it off, or leave out the key insight driving that conclusion, forcing me to dig through the paper, and generally defeating the purpose of it.
As someone who has written a few papers myself I fully agree. Just because the conclusion is in the abstract, doesn’t mean that one starts out with a conclusion in mind. The whole idea of the scientific method, hypothesis testing, etc. is to look at the data as objectively as possible. Of course, not all scientists follow the best practice, but this is what peer review is for (a word completely missing in the article).
Actually, it would be nice to have an abstract for the post “The Bottom Line” that tells you what the bottom line rule is without having to read the whole thing. It’s basically the confirmation bias, right?
Still the post makes a lot of good points about single-blind journals, paywall, etc. These are real problems that have to be solved to make science more accessible.