2703: Paper Title
| Paper Title |
 Title text: CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT: The authors hope these results are correct because we all want to be cool people who are good at science. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a MICROBE TRYING TO LURE YOU WITH CLICKBAIT. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
Many if not most scientific research papers present a hypothesis and the result of testing the hypothesis. Scientific papers should also have titles which describe the content of the papers. See 2456: Types of Scientific Paper.
Cueball is writing a research paper with a clickbait and puffery title, "Check out this cool microbe we found." His colleague Megan asks him whether science is supposed to be about formulating a hypothesis and testing it. Cueball agrees, changing the title to, "Is our lab really good at finding cool microbes? Some preliminary data." However, that is still an overly-promotional clickbait title, purporting to be a study of the authors' own competence, which would be highly unusual because of the lack of objectivity caused by the authors being the subject of investigation. Clickbait is a recurring theme on xkcd, recently considered within science publications in 2001: Clickbait-Corrected p-Value.
Empirical investigations and analysis papers almost always state and test a hypothesis, but there are many kinds of scientific papers which likely will not, including literature reviews, which qualitatively summarize the results of other papers; meta-analyses, which quantitatively summarize the results and quality of other work; observational reports (or case studies — not to be confused with observational studies, a kind of emperical analysis), which present data and a chronicle of its collection without analysis, testing, or interpretation; conference papers, which present preliminary work without peer review; definition papers, which attempt to formalize terms used in divergent ways in prior work; syntheses, which present alternative views combining multiple and often conflicting concepts; comparative studies, which compare and contrast a class of concepts; interpretive papers, showing a different perspective on previous work; technical reports, which may present information on a specific procedural topic or progress and results in a field; opinion and editorial essays, which are intended to argue a point of view persuasively; book reviews, which summarize monographs or biographies; and grant proposals, which make the case for funding a project. Mathematical or logic research papers which don't involve emperical observations or uncertainty would be considered technical reports in other fields. Engineering work can be reported as an emperical investigation or a technical report.
Cueball seems to want to author an observational report, but Megan would prefer an emperical investigation or analysis, perhaps because they are more likely to be accepted by peer reviewed journals, and as such are more prestigious than mere conference papers, "letters," or "communications" as observational reports are usually published. However, research articles describing the discovery of new microbes in prestigious peer-reviewed journals are often published as observational reports[1][2][3] so Megan's concerns may be unfounded; even if so, the editors of any reputable journal would almost certainly require a far more descriptive and less overtly promotional title from Cueball. The question remains whether an intial submission with a catchy clickbait title might get more prompt attention from editors and reviewers.
In the title text, the conflict of interest statement says that the authors hope their results are correct because, "we all want to be cool people who are good at science." A scientific publication's potential conflict of interest usually refers to the authors' financial, familial, or other external interests in the research outcomes. The disclosure statement does not describe a conflict between the authors' extrinsic motivations and factors influencing the accuracy and neutrality of their work; in fact it claims the opposite, an alignment between their intrinsic motivations and the goal of producing high quality work.
Transcript
- [Megan is standing behind and looking over the shoulder of Cueball who is sitting in his office chair at his desk typing on the keyboard. A line from the keyboard goes up to two boxes above them. A smaller one at the top, half the length and a third the height of the larger box below. There are text in both boxes. The bottom box is not filled out with text. At the end of the text in the bottom box the line indicating where the courser are can be seen, as in this is what Megan can see on the screen:]
- Paper title
- Check out this cool microbe we found|
- [Pan to only showing Megan who has taken a hand up to her chin. Cueball replies from off-panel.]
- Megan: Isn’t science supposed to be about formulating a hypothesis and then testing it?
- Cueball - off panel: Oh. Yeah, I guess.
- [Same setting as in the first panel, but now the bottom box is filled out with text, but still with the courser shown at the end:]
- Paper title
- Is our lab really good at finding cool microbes? Some preliminary data|
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refresh comments!Discussion
Finished transcript added clickbait category and started the explanation on clickbait titles and title text. For sure it needs to be revised, but hope it can be used to build upon. --Kynde (talk) 22:47, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
You know you've been editing too long when the captcha shows you traffic lights within walking distance. 172.70.211.145 23:39, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Technically the bacterium in reference [3], Candidatus Thiomargarita magnifica, isn't a microbe. But Frigoriflavimonas asaccharolytica in reference [4] is indisputably cool. 172.71.158.91 05:05, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
I don’t understand the claim that the title text disclaimer means that their intrinsic motivation aligns with the goal of producing high quality work. High quality work in general, yes, but not in this case? I mean, the study concerns wether they are good at finding cool microbes, while they have an intrinsic motivation to be good at it. Doesn’t this mean that their desire to be good may cause them to overrate their goodness in their study of their own goodness? —While False (museum | talk | contributions | logs | rights | printable version | page information | what links there | related changes | Google search | current time: 20:46) 05:42, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
- I wonder if the person who wrote the interpretation was considering Cueball's original title, since that wouldn't motivate them to lie about their abilities, and an accurate description of the "cool microbe" would be executing their desire to be "good at science". But I agree that the joke seems to stem from the updated title, where their abilities are the hypothesis under question.162.158.107.245 14:56, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm getting an Alex Trebek vibe here — "I'm sorry, we can't accept that since you did not put it in the form of a question." RAGBRAIvet (talk) 04:35, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
I didn't read the paper title as being clickbait (or puffery) at all, just informal and playful. How is "cool microbe" deceitful or misleading? If anything, most scientists would probably be less likely to read (or even find) a paper with that title, I imagine. Same type of humor as 2456: Types of Scientific Paper 172.71.102.215 08:06, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
