From the “everything is robust” department.
We’ve long noted at WUWT that the word “robust” has seen a significant rise in usage in climate science papers, becoming a favorite word to use when statistical Spackle has been applied to climate data. Now there’s evidence from a new study suggesting that observation is spot-on.
From Nature:
‘Novel, amazing, innovative’: positive words on the rise in science papers
Analysis suggests an increasing tendency to exaggerate and polarize results.
Philip Ball
Scientists have become more upbeat in describing their research, an analysis of papers in the PubMed database suggests.
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’.
Source: Ref. 1
Psychiatrist Christiaan Vinkers and his colleagues searched papers on PubMed for 25 ‘positive’ words and 25 ‘negative’ words (which the authors selected by manually analysing papers and consulting thesaurus listings). The number of papers containing any of the positive words in their title or abstract rose from an average of 2% in 1974–80 to 17.5% in 2014. Use of the 25 negative words rose from 1.3% to 2.4% over the same period, according to the study, published in the British Medical Journal on 14 December1.
Rising hype
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.
…
But Vinkers and his colleagues think that the trend highlights a problem. “If everything is ‘robust’ and ‘novel’”, says Vinkers, then there is no distinction between the qualities of findings. “In that case, words used to describe scientific results are no longer driven by the content but by marketability.”
A BBC story here says the use of the word “robust” has gone up 15000% They write:
Despite working with facts, figures and empirical evidence, the world of science appears to have a growing addiction to hyperbole. Researchers at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands looked at four decades worth of medical and scientific publications, and found a significant upwards trend of positive words. We’ve all heard of those ”ground-breaking” studies or ”innovative” research projects. Dr Christiaan Vinkers – a psychiatrist at the Rudolf Magnus brain centre – was the main author of another ”very robust” report.
This tool used to analyse words, when selected for academic use, shows that indeed, “robust” is a favorite word of science:
Source: http://www.wordandphrase.info/academic/frequencyList.asp
And, this Ngram suggests that at least through 2008, the word “robust” has become vastly more popular in books. It’s almost like a hockey stick of robustness:
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What does anyone expect when “a plausible story” is constantly conflated with “hypothesis”? Robust results!
In the humanities,the equivalent is “scrupulous” or “meticulous.”
They should have had ‘worrisome, disconcerting, disturbing’ from the negative data set to the hyperbole data set because they usually use these to tell us how unprecedented their projections are.
I remember about 20 years ago when “robust” became the ubiquitous in-word in manufacturing company jargon, then it faded to normal usage after about 10 years. On the same subject, lately I’ve been wondering how long the faddish use of the noun “couple” used as an adjective withoutthe connecting preposition “of” is going to plague us. If we insist on saying “a couple days” and “a couple storms,” why not say “a pair shoes,” a group women,” “a pile crap,” etc.? Entropy at work.
Related to Louis LeBlanc’s note on dropping “of”, have you noted how quickly such changes are adopted by journalists (“the chattering classes” as someone brighter than me once said).
Ian M
Robustness is a great when used as defined in ISO 17025, but it’s likely to have a different meaning in the planet GIGO native language.
What might be interesting is to generate a “paper” and distribute it to Scientists on journal review lists; paper “A” would be written in a neutral voice, and paper “B” would have frequent positive words inserted and see what the responses to a request for criticism would produce.
It would be sad if an Author had to write in a grandiose style to get published, but that is my suspicion. People tend to respond most favourably to people who are either like them or like how they strive to be, most of the gate-keepers at the journals strike me as narcissistic and grandiose.
“the world of science appears to have a growing addiction to hyperbole.”
That’s nothing compared to the world of blogs.
The problem is that readers “homogenize” superlative adjectives with the result that nothing is superlative.
If every storm is “extreme”, how shall you describe the worst? Tornadoes have an “F” scale; you don’t need to say “incredible tornado” you say “F5 tornado” and people generally know what you mean. If an F5 tornado is incredible, an F1 is just a twister.
Count the number of times “extreme”, “robust”, “incredible” and “unprecedented” exist on just one page of ATTP. I barely remember the topic; I became fascinated with all these adjectives. Everything is incredible, even mildness!
“This Northern Hemisphere winter has also been incredibly mild”
This is a fantastic study with superb results. It would have been splendid if they used a more impressive thesaurus.
‘Ode to Exaggeration’ a poem by J.M.Whitman
Hyperbole came to my front door one day,
And knocked in a robust way.
I said go away,
Its scream faded in dismay
Where it went I cannot say.
John
I guess this goes along with a decade or two of grade inflation. It only stands to reason that we would have word inflation as well.
Reminds me of when retailers change the size of something instead of raising the price. Or change “medium” to “large”, etc.
I suspect that the word robust is the forerunner to the use of a shortened version of the word which will describe the AGW theory. If you leave out the first two letters you may see the next trend BUST.
ROB US….:)
RObust stands for Realty Obserrved theory BUST.
Does the Realty Theory have something to do with buying and selling houses? 😛
For many years, as soon as I saw ‘robust’ in the article, I knew it was a BS piece. Hyperbole has been a main feature of the AGW agenda for 20 years.
Why am I not surprised? These scientists are from the same age group that produces product advertising with all its honesty and transparency about products.
How many times have you heard the following:
INTRODUCING THE ALL-NEW X
Where X is the name of a car.
I suspect that if a car model was “all new” (i.e. nothing carried over from the previous model year) the company that made it would have to put a 100 million dollar price tag on it.
Supercclifragilisicexpialldo . . .
Well, in the IPCC assessment case, its wants to accentuate the negative impacts.
But, I think we should include accentuating the positive impacts as well . . . so we got to . . .
John
Back in the ’60’s, Mad Magazine had an issue devoted to the hyperbole used in advertising, and opined that if a company was touting “new, improved Product”, then the old product was the old, unimproved version. Hilarious.
Hyper – Bole
Fanatical Tree Stump
Came upon a book titled “Why Darwin Matters” by Michael Shermer. Seems to me there are significant similarities between ID and CAGW.
Unfortunately, like most of the mainstream skeptics, Shermer has gone full warmunist.
Nicholas,
“Seems to me there are significant similarities between ID and CAGW.”
I see the exact opposite correlation. In fact, it seems to me that it was the elevation of Evolution to a “scientific fact” without any observable scientific proof, that actually paved the way for the same treatment of the CAGW theory.
True believers (which included me till just a few years ago) simply do not question Evolution theory. And often treat those who don’t accept it as fact, in exactly the same way as CAGW skeptics are treated by the CAGW faithful, it seems to me.
Evolution cannot be a fact. We have not observed it.
Observation is a hallmark of science.
Projections about the future can never be “fact.” They cannot be true until the time comes. A forecast, prediction, or projection may be very well done, but it is never fact.
Likewise, a model of how the species we see have come to be here with us will always require some assumptions, since we cannot simply observe the unobserved past. And, there is no logical way to exclude counter-factuals, as is done when you run an experiment.
Finally, there are many compelling logical arguments against evolution, as well as for it. To me, the greatest argument against evolution is the incredible reliance upon quite unlikely simultaneity: for almost any kind of animal, and almost any organ or symbiotic relationship you can think of, you have incredible chicken-egg problems.
It is fine to believe in evolution as a concept to explain where all of the species we see came from; but we should practice skepticism, rather than just accept what our middle-school teachers were guided to tell us to believe in middle school science class.
In my opinion, it is better to have a middle-school kid question evolution, then maybe progress to puzzling over the issue with a critical mind, than to take the path of ostracizing the kid for not accepting the prevailing dogma.
Like pondering this puzzle:
“When the blood–testes barrier is breached, and sperm enters the bloodstream, the immune system mounts an autoimmune response against the sperm.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93testis_barrier
How did we evolve sperm, essential for the next generation, when sperm is recognized as a foreign body, and is attacked by the body when detected? That is quite a chicken-and-egg problem to account for.
On the female side: during pregnancy, a woman’s estrogen level triples. This is necessary for the developmental process of fetus and for the breast to move to the milk-producing state temporarily. This estrogen comes from the placenta. The placenta is formed from the fertilized egg, not from the mother. So, in short, a developing baby pumps its mom with the hormones needed to provide the necessary environment for its development. Read that again: in utero, a baby provokes the development of its necessary environment from its mother’s body. A baby cannot develop in utero and then be born without so setting up its womb-environment.
Logically, this is quite challenging to accept as a product of evolution. Babies evolved to affect their mom’s bodies to allow the babies to be possible?
You can get yourself out of this with Gradualism, and with Deep Time. This WAS all fine and good until the fossil record led evolutionary scientists to give up on Gradualism, and move on to Punctuated Equilibrium, and eras of species “explosions.”
Intelligent Design does solve the problem: God made us this way; no need for evolution to produce a body that can develop a cell it depends on while also having a biological imperative to kill that cell. However, with ID, you don’t escape the observability problem, and there is literally a logical weakness since ID is literally built on a Deux-Ex-Machina explanation. To accept ID, you have to add in other lines of argument.
TheLastDemocrat wrote “Evolution cannot be a fact. We have not observed it.”
There is no “we” for I have no way of knowing that you observe what I observe.
“Observation is a hallmark of science.”
I have not observed gravity and neither have you. I observe the effects of gravity.
“the species we see…”
There is no “we” for I have no way of knowing whether you see what I see.
“…will always require some assumptions”
Species do not require assumptions. You can choose to make assumptions if you wish.
“It is fine to believe in evolution as a concept”
Thank you for your approval!
“…species we see came from; but we should practice skepticism”
You seem unusually fond of “we”.
“How did we evolve sperm”
I use a Hewlett-Packard Model 6216A Sperm Evolver. Now that I’ve had my children I use it only to charge batteries; a somewhat unglorious fate for a fine instrument, but it seems HP no longer makes fine engineering instruments of this kind. Still, it gracefully handles the constant current to constant voltage transition necessary to charge lithium polymer batteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP%E2%sperm_evolver
“Intelligent Design does solve the problem”
I do not perceive a problem to be solved. Arguments among scientists are welcome to stay among scientists. However, if you were to decide to do it again or do it yourself, having the knowledge of the actual procedure — repeatability — is in the realm of science; waiting for God to create another universe is not.
I think you are a provocateur. Still, I’ll play the game.
TLD asks “How did we evolve sperm”
Since I did this just last week I still remember!
It seems that the single-celled gamete came first and the mammal that surrounds it is just the wrapper. So your question reverses the order of operations — the correct question is how did the sperm evolve its human? I don’t know but it seems to have (1) taken a long time and (2) wasn’t always successful.
Last Dem,
“However, with ID, you don’t escape the observability problem, and there is literally a logical weakness since ID is literally built on a Deux-Ex-Machina explanation. To accept ID, you have to add in other lines of argument.”
How is Evolution any different in that regard (if you believe it is)?
Create your own hyperbola
Go to: http://www.intmath.com/plane-analytic-geometry/conic-sections-summary-interactive.php
Set y = 0, set rotation angle ɵ = 90, move x between 100 and -100.
I’m sorry but it made me think of this:
“…
when statistical Spackle has been applied to climate data.
…”
Nice turn of the phrase. I like it.
Most of those words are evaluative, as opposed to factual. In the ad world the positive ones are called puffery, which just means extravagant praise. But adman David Ogilvy said that “facts will always outsell flatulent puffery.” Unfortunately, this also means on Mad Avenue that if you don’t have a solid factual defense of your product, the agency may resort to puffery and brag and boast. In the long run, strong sales will not result. Let’s hope sales of these hyperbolic studies eventually also declne!
From ‘State of Fear’:
“If you study the media, as my graduate students and I do, seeking to find shifts in normative conceptualization, you discover something extremely interesting. We looked and transcripts of news programs of the major networks – NBC, ABC, CBS. We also looked at stories I the newspapers of New York, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, and Seattle. We counted the frequency of certain concepts and terms used by the media. The results were very striking.
There was a major shift in the fall of 1989. Before that time, the media did not make excessive use of terms such as ‘crisis,’ ‘catastrophe,’ ‘cataclysm,’ ‘plague,’ or ‘disaster.’ For example, during the 1980’s, the word crisis appeared in news reports about as often as the world ‘budget.’ In addition, prior to 1989, adjectives such as ‘dire,’ ‘unprecedented,’ ‘dreaded,’ were not common in television reports or newspaper headlines. But then it all changed.
These terms started to become more and more common. The word ‘catastrophe’ was used five times more often in 1995 than it was in 1985. Its used doubled again b the year 2000. And the stories changed, too. There was a heightened emphasis on fear, worry, danger, uncertainty, panic.”
“I am leading to the notion of social control. To the requirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. To keep them driving on the right side of the road – or the left, as the case may be. To keep them paying taxes. And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.
For fifty years, Western nations had maintained their citizens in a state of perpetual fear. Fear of the other side. Fear of nuclear war. The Communist menace. The Iron Curtain. The Evil Empire. And within the Communist countries, the same in reverse. Fear of us. Then, suddenly, I the fall of 1989, it was all finished. Gone, vanished. Over. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a vacuum of fear. Nature abhors a vacuum. Something had to fill it.
And the evidence shows that the environmental crisis has taken the place of the Cold War. Of course, now we have radical fundamentalism and post-9/11 terrorism to make us afraid, and those are certainly real reasons for fear, but that’s not my point. My point is, there is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us. Before terrorism we feared the toxic environment. Before that we had the Communist menace. The point is, although the specific cause of our far may change, we are never without the fear itself. Fear pervades society in all its aspects. Perpetually.”
This is much like architecture: as long as the buildings are pretty, who cares if they actually WORK?
It may have started with the word “very”.
As soon as someone says something is “very …” I turn off. As in, “It’s going to be VERY cold tonight”, “The solution was VERY concentrated”, “Catastrophic Global Warming is VERY well founded.”
VERY means nothing. Generally it covers up sloppiness or laziness.
“Very cold” because I can’t be bothered to make a reliable estimate.
“Very concentrated” because I couldn’t be bothered to find out – Moles per litre, saturated – there could be many options.
CGW Very well founded – give us some hard data – “Nulis in Verba”
VERY in writing and speaking is like waving my arms about and shouting. It adds nothing except to reveal my argument is weak.
And at the other end…the word “only”.
Sometimes as in “its only going to rain a few millimeters”, sometimes in “I only wanted a drink of milk”, when dealing with a five year old and a kitchen floor covered with an increasingly expensive moo juice.
Mrs. Bobo warned me and the rest of my English class 50 years ago, “Beware of people who use adjectives to describe the finite.”