A brief guide to Scientific literature

Phrase                               Translation
------------------------------------------------

It has been long known...............I haven't bothered to check the references
It is known..........................I believe
It is believed.......................I think
It is generally believed.............My collegues and I think
There has been some discussion.......Nobody agrees with me
It can be shown......................Take my word for it
It is proven.........................It agrees with something mathematical
Of great theoretical importance......I find it interesting
Of great practical importance........This justifies my employment
Of great historical importance.......This ought to make me famous
Some samples were chosen for study...The others didn't make sense
Typical results are shown............The best results are shown
Correct within order of magnitude....Wrong
The values were obtained empirically.The values were obtained by accident
The results are inconclusive.........The results seem to disprove my hypothesis
Additional work is required..........Someone else can work out the details
It might be argued that..............I have a good answer to this objection
The investigations proved rewarding..My grant has been renewed
Synthesised according to.............Purchased from Sigma
standard protocols
Thanks to Joe Blow for expert........Thanks to Joe Blow for doing
technical assistance and Jane        all the work and Jane Doe for
Doe for valuable discussion.         telling me what it meant.
While it has not been possible.......The experiments didn't work out,
to provide definite answers to       but I figured I could at least
these questions...                   get a publication out of it.
Mus musculus domesticus..............Mus musculus domesticus
was chosen as especially suitable to is a lovely animal
test this hypothesis.                which is easy to study in
                                     the lab.
accidentally strained during mounting.....dropped on the floor
Handled with extreme care............not dropped on the floor
throughout the experiments
Although some detail has been.......It is impossible to tell from the
lost in reproduction, it is clear   original micrograph.
from the original micrograph
Presumably at longer times..........I didn't take the time to find out.

The agreement with the predicted curve is...
        excellent                     fair
        good                          poor
        satisfactory                  doubtful
        fair                          imaginary
        as good as could be expected  non-existent

The most reliable values are.........Jones was a student of mine.
those of Jones.
It is clear that much additional.....I don't understand it.
work will be required before
a complete understanding.
Unfortunately, a quantitative........Neither does anybody else.
theory to account for these effects
has not  been formulated.
It is hoped that this work will......This paper isn't very good, but
stimulate further work in the field. neither are any of the others in
                                     this miserable subject.