A Brief Guide To Understanding Scientific Literature

                    
Phrase in the article Translation to real terms
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
Thanks to Joe Blow for expert technical assistance and Jane Doe for valuable discussion. Thanks to Joe Blow for doing all the work and Jane Doe for telling me what it meant.
While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to these questions... The experiments didn't work out, but I figured I could at least get a publication out of it...
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 those of Jones. Jones was a student of mine.
t is suggested that... 
I think that...
It is believed that... I think that...
It may be that... I think that...
It is generally believed that... A couple of other guys think so too.
It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding is reached. I don't understand it.
Unfortunately, a quantitative theory to account for these effects has not been formulated. Neither does anybody else.
It is hoped that this work will stimulate further work in the field. This paper isn't very good, but neither are any of the others in this miserable subject.