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.
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.