South
Senior Member
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- 466
- Location
- Southeastern United States
Why do researchers use such convoluted sentence structures in writing their reports for research studies?
For example, here's a sentence from a study on things that kill candida. In the report, "C. Albicans" means candida:
"For C. albicans, antagonism was observed for the combination of MUC7 12-mer and calcium; however, there was synergism between MUC7 12-mer and EDTA"
Allrighty then. English?
"antagonism was observed" could mean of these:
A. The combination of MUC7 12-mer and calcium killed candida more than either of these alone did.
Or it could mean:
B. The calcium antagonized the killing effect that MUC7 12-mer had, and thus the MUC7 12-mer was less effective when calcium was present, not more effective.
Before assuming I know what they meant, I then read the following sentence:
"No antagonism but additivity or indifference was observed for the combination of MUC7 12-mer and potassium, sodium or magnesium" So this language seems to imply that in their earlier use of the word "antagonism", they meant that substance X reversed the candida-killing quality of substance Y.
Reports on the Web often do not include the tables of numeric results, to use to simply see the results in numeric form.
Couldn't they just say "Candida in petri dishes was reduced 20% by a combination of X and Y, but was only reduced 10% by Y alone". There, a simple sentence.
(And if I see the word "respectively" after a loooooong sentence in one more research paper, I'll scream. But that's another subject.)
For example, here's a sentence from a study on things that kill candida. In the report, "C. Albicans" means candida:
"For C. albicans, antagonism was observed for the combination of MUC7 12-mer and calcium; however, there was synergism between MUC7 12-mer and EDTA"
Allrighty then. English?
"antagonism was observed" could mean of these:
A. The combination of MUC7 12-mer and calcium killed candida more than either of these alone did.
Or it could mean:
B. The calcium antagonized the killing effect that MUC7 12-mer had, and thus the MUC7 12-mer was less effective when calcium was present, not more effective.
Before assuming I know what they meant, I then read the following sentence:
"No antagonism but additivity or indifference was observed for the combination of MUC7 12-mer and potassium, sodium or magnesium" So this language seems to imply that in their earlier use of the word "antagonism", they meant that substance X reversed the candida-killing quality of substance Y.
Reports on the Web often do not include the tables of numeric results, to use to simply see the results in numeric form.
Couldn't they just say "Candida in petri dishes was reduced 20% by a combination of X and Y, but was only reduced 10% by Y alone". There, a simple sentence.
(And if I see the word "respectively" after a loooooong sentence in one more research paper, I'll scream. But that's another subject.)