Cleaning out some old files I stumbled across this vintage piece from sometime in my 1970s academic career (I believe at the time I adapted this from some other original source?). Am sure most of you have seen such parodies before. I do find it noteworthy that several of the issues taken quite seriously in statistics and research methodology currently were already being hinted at and joked about by we grad students 40+ years ago….:
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A Guide to the Reading and Understanding of Research Literature
Phrase:
"it has long been known that…."
Really means:
I haven’t bothered to look up the original references
Phrase:
"…of great theoretical and practical interest"
Means:
interesting to me
Phrase:
"the … reagent was chosen as especially suitable for the experimental procedure"
Means:
the fellow in the next lab over already had some made up
Phrase:
"subjects for the study were randomly chosen"
Means:
students in Psych. 101 were asked to participate as a prerequisite for passing the course
Phrase:
"three of the samples were selected for detailed study"
Means:
the results on the others didn’t make any sense
Phrase:
"accidentally strained during mounting"
Means:
dropped on the floor
Phrase:
"handled with extreme care throughout the experiment"
Means:
not dropped on floor
Phrase:
"typical results are shown…"
Means:
the best results are shown
Phrase:
"the data revealed a linear correlation"
Means:
we took a ruler and drew a line
"agreement with the predicted curve is:"
excellent (means fair)
good (means poor)
satisfactory (means doubtful)
fair (means imaginary)
Phrase:
"the values are correct at least within an order of magnitude"
Means:
the values are wrong
Phrase:
"statistically significant"
Means:
possibly plausible
Phrase:
"it is suggested that…”
Means:
I believe
Phrase:
"it may be that…”
Means:
I think
Phrase:
"It is generally believed that….”
Means:
a couple of other guys think so too
Phrase:
"it is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding…”
Means:
I don’t understand it
Phrase:
"unfortunately, a quantitative theory to account for these results has not been formulated”
Means:
neither does anyone else understand it
Phrase:
"while it has not been possible to provide definite answers to these questions…”
Means:
the experiment didn’t work, but I figured I could at least get a publication out of it
Phrase:
"further work in this area is warranted…”
Means:
I intend to get a second publication out of this data
Phrase:
"special thanks are due to R. Stoodle for technical assistance and to J. Goober for valuable discussions”
Means:
R. Stoodle did the work and J. Goober explained what it all meant
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