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SilasBarta comments on Why Academic Papers Are A Terrible Discussion Forum - Less Wrong
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While that is how paper are structured, it is in my experience not how they are written. The abstract is written last, or at least after the results are known, and summarizes the rest of the paper.
The real problem is the difficulty in getting negative results published, which pushes authors to make things appear better than they really are or to hunt for positive aspects.
Yeah, that struck me as a "WTF?" I mean, it may certainly be the case the authors decide their bottom line before coming up with the evidence and arguments for it, but you can't infer that from the fact that the abstract comes first and gives its conclusion -- they're not (or at least shouldn't be) written in the order you read the paper.
I would much prefer that an abstract give the paper's conclusion! I've seen too many abstracts that either leave it off, or leave out the key insight driving that conclusion, forcing me to dig through the paper, and generally defeating the purpose of it.