Slashdot Mirror
Hype In Science Papers On the Rise (nature.com)
schwit1 writes: In the past forty years the use of descriptive words by scientists to positively hype their results in papers has increased steadily. "Researchers at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands say that the frequency of positive-sounding words such as 'novel', 'amazing', 'innovative' and 'unprecedented' has increased almost nine-fold in the titles and abstracts of papers published between 1974 and 2014. There has also been a smaller — yet still statistically significant — rise in the frequency of negative words, such as 'disappointing' and 'pessimistic'.
The most obvious interpretation of the results is that they reflect an increase in hype and exaggeration, rather than a real improvement in the incidence or quality of discoveries, says Vinkers. The findings "fit our own observations that in order to get published, you need to emphasize what is special and unique about your study," he says. Researchers may be tempted to make their findings stand out from thousands of others — a tendency that might also explain the more modest rise in usage of negative words.
The word 'novel' now appears in more than 7% of PubMed paper titles and abstracts, and the researchers jokingly extrapolate that, on the basis of its past rise, it is set to appear in every paper by the year 2123." This study was focused on the medical field, so it is unclear if its results could be extrapolated to other science fields.
The most obvious interpretation of the results is that they reflect an increase in hype and exaggeration, rather than a real improvement in the incidence or quality of discoveries, says Vinkers. The findings "fit our own observations that in order to get published, you need to emphasize what is special and unique about your study," he says. Researchers may be tempted to make their findings stand out from thousands of others — a tendency that might also explain the more modest rise in usage of negative words.
The word 'novel' now appears in more than 7% of PubMed paper titles and abstracts, and the researchers jokingly extrapolate that, on the basis of its past rise, it is set to appear in every paper by the year 2123." This study was focused on the medical field, so it is unclear if its results could be extrapolated to other science fields.
The expansion of clickbait headlines into everything makes me weep for humanity.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
People demand value for money from government funding. Can't give funding to slacker scientists who slack in their ivory tower all day wearing tweed and drinking sherry and whatnot or whatever it is that academics do.
So, it's demanded that scientists perform. Which means do important stuff. And lots of it. Publish or perish! MOAR PAPERS! But are they good? That's measured by how important all other scientists think their work is. Which is measured by citations. And to get citations, you need to get people interested enough to read your paper, which now has to stand out in the massive flood of papers which is occuring because people need to be seen to be churning out work.
And that means up-selling the papers, which means hype.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"The word 'novel' now appears in more than 7% of PubMed paper titles"
Isn't this simply a reflection of how long the papers are?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I don't know, that study that they've done is certainly novel, innovative, and unprecedented. I dare say, it's amazing!
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
They're trying to increase their Bullshit Bingo scores...
"The word 'novel' now appears in more than 7% of PubMed paper titles and abstracts, and the researchers jokingly extrapolate that, on the basis of its past rise, it is set to appear in every paper by the year 2123."
It strikes me that in the next few years at least, this is only going to accelerate. My (UK) university's internal review procedures require you to "emphasize the novelty." The abstracts of almost all of the papers in journals I actually read (respect?) contain some description of the novelty, regardless of how small the incremental advance in performance is. This seems unavoidable since your paper must be different to other peoples' work and you must spell out to the editor how this condition is met.
As for self-promotion, I think you'd have to be an idiot to not self-promote to some extent. Job security in academia looks pretty flimsy from where I sit (surrounded by PhDs and post-docs). Publish often, otherwise you can get out of academia.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to do a spin-off of this study examining "impact."
I knew I needed to stop reading Slashdot and finish my PhD when I started to miss articles by Bennett Haselton.
And that means up-selling the papers, which means hype.
Indeed. The list of positive words tracked in TFA is:
amazing, assuring, astonishing, bright, creative, encouraging, enormous, excellent, favourable, groundbreaking, hopeful, innovative, inspiring, inventive, novel, phenomenal, prominent, promising, reassuring, remarkable, robust, spectacular, supportive, unique, unprecedented
A lot of these are clearly "hype" words (amazing, spectacular, etc.), but I'm a little less sure of others. Some clearly could be used to mean specific things regarding the experiments, the data, or descriptions of components (bright, enormous, unique), some have technical meanings that are important (phenomenal, robust), and others just don't seem really "positive" like the others in implying "hype" (assuring, reassuring, supportive -- is this judging hype or how much "self-help" is going on in these articles?).
Anyhow, I would also note that this study began by looking at papers from the 70s. I mean -- come on, you need to treat your data with care. Back then, "hype" words would be different. Why aren't they tracking the use of groovy, far out, outta sight, solid, totally hip, and funkadelic?