Science paper's abstract has one word

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/19/science-papers-abstract-has.html

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Obviously, this is a crap way to write an abstract, because while amusing, how about some basic description of methodology, so we can know you’re not just talking through your hat.

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When the findings do not depend on the methodologies used nor potentially to be used to reproducte the findings, I see no need to discuss them, at all.

Choose ANY methodology, same finding.

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If this paper is not in your area of expertise, such a description will not help you form that judgement, because you won’t know enough about the discipline to assess whether the methodology is sufficiently robust to support the conclusion. In that case, you should trust the reviewers and accept the opinion of the experts.

If this paper is in your area of expertise, the Data section comprises 543 words and two pretty maps. Go ahead and read it yourself.

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That’s not how science works, you know.

Science works by allowing others to review and criticize your methodology and therefore your conclusions. By offering the possibility to repeat your experiments and inviting challenges to both the way of experimenting and the findings. Only if a paper can survive this scrutiny, can it be accepted as scientifically valid.

But it doesn’t have to include all of that in the abstract.

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The premise was unscientific. That’s how science works.

#no

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Nothing is “unscientific,” because science is a method, not an ideology. Dana Scully be damned.

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Don’t blame science for, in trying to describe an ideology, coming up with results that don’t appear to be the science you’re used to - from when science is more correctly applied to non-ideological topics.

This is more of a [null] result, or possibly a thrown exception error. Just no. #no.

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The title of the thesis is pretty much enough to reproduce the whole experiment, and the methodology is more or less trivial. If some of it wasn’t straight forward, it is most likely a methodical detail and doesn’t belong into the abstract.

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