18 replies to this topic

[gebirgsziege]

pito, on Sep 10 2009, 08:45 AM, said:

But , why would they say something in the abstract thats not in the text? That would make no sense to me.

You are right, but keep aware of this when reading papers. You will be suprised how often this happens.

Cannot understand it either....maybe its just bad writing that the point of the abstract does not get clear or it is sloppy writing......

Edited by gebirgsziege, 10 September 2009 - 01:23 AM.

[HomeBrew]

I disagree with using just abstracts -- many authors make declarative statements in their abstracts that might not be fully supported in the text.  This is where your critical analysis comes in -- the authors may state something unequivocally in the abstract because they believe it (one hopes), but the key point is whether their data fully supports such a statement *in your opinion*.  You can not make this judgment unless you read the paper itself.

[gebirgsziege]

HomeBrew, on Sep 10 2009, 01:24 PM, said:

I disagree with using just abstracts -- many authors make declarative statements in their abstracts that might not be fully supported in the text.  This is where your critical analysis comes in -- the authors may state something unequivocally in the abstract because they believe it (one hopes), but the key point is whether their data fully supports such a statement *in your opinion*.  You can not make this judgment unless you read the paper itself.

Thank you very much homebrew.....this is just what I meant with something in abstract which is not supported by the paper. I should work on the precision of my English.

[josse]

gebirgsziege, on Sep 8 2009, 12:19 PM, said:

original paper if available.

Otherwise cite eg. "Smith et al. 1901 cited by Miller et al. 2005" so you can avoid that the mistakes leelee pointed out happen (I am sure you know the spinac/iron story....)

Could you explain me the spinac/iron story because I do not understand this?

And I also wanted to add that I always used to put the original source or paper, but I got my ass kicked because I used a paper that was "too" old and I needed to put in another, newever one that conformed the old paper   I just don't get that.