"Without further ado": the shortest scientific articles
We have already talked about speed reading , as well as how to read scientific articles in the most efficient way so that the time spent on them will be usefully. However, there is a category of materials, the reading of which does not take much time in principle - today we will tell about the shortest scientific articles in history.
Photo by Zaheer Mohiuddin CC-BY
Mathematics is one of the disciplines in which brevity is fully justified: mathematical language is capacious and comprehensive, and formulas, diagrams, and illustrations can turn out to be “more effective than a thousand words.”
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However, in 2005, scientists John Conway (Johm Conway) and Alexander Soifer (Alexander Soifer) decided to write "the shortest scientific article on mathematics in the world." The body of the article itself consists of two words (and two illustrations - they contain the answer to the question posed in the title).
At first, the American Mathematical Monthly Journal was skeptical of the article and asked to add “at least a couple of lines”. However, scientists did not give up and argued their position by saying that a respected scientific journal could not refuse to publish, based on the fact that it prefers the amount of [text] to its quality. As a result - not without a debate between the authors of the article and the editors of the journal - the material was nevertheless published.
However, despite the laconism of the mathematical language, examples of voluminous articles and publications in mathematics are not less, but even more. For example, the proof of the Robertson-Seymour Minor of the Count’s Minor Theorem took 500 pages and more than 20 articles (even a separate page on Wikipedia is devoted to voluminous proofs of the theorems).
The brevity of a scientific article does not mean that it will take as much time to understand the material as directly to read (here, by the way, there is not much difference between an ultrashort and an ordinary scientific article - to thoroughly understand the material, no matter how concise it is presented, work hard).
However, in some cases, the understanding of the material really does not take much time - especially if there is not a single word in the article: neither specific terms, nor academic jargon, nor diagrams, nor even graphs and formulas.
This is what an article called “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of 'Writer's Block') written by Dennis Upper (Dennis Upper), published in 1974 in the respected scientific journal of Journal of applied behavioral analysis, looks like . It is usually called the "shortest scientific article in the world."
By the way, no matter how absurd it may sound, this “empty” article is not a single event in the scientific community: such materials have the right to exist, if only because in science the lack of results is also a result ( here is another example of such an article published in 1972 in the journal Linguistic Inquiry).
One might think that forty years ago scientific journals were simply more loyal to humor and self-irony. However, materials that convincingly demonstrate the lack of results are being created now. For example, in 2016, such work appeared in the German magazine Chemie in unserer Zeit - there is nothing in it except for the title and annotation. The article is called “A comprehensive review of consumer products that do not contain“ chemistry ”. According to scientists, the labeling "Chemical free" simply does not make sense, so, strictly speaking, there is nothing to observe in this case.
By the way, as Reddit users rightly point out , one of the main rules for reading scientific articles plays an especially important role in relation to such materials: it is important to carefully study the title and abstract.
Although sometimes attentive reading of everything that may be written about an article in general is not enough - sometimes a few stories and even dramas follow a couple of words in a scientific journal. For example, the article by Ian Tatterstall in the American Evolutionary Anthropology contains only two words - “Enough already.” In fact, this is an example of “article controversy” that has developed between Tatterstable and his anthropologist colleague Matt Cartmill. Scientists conducted a correspondence dispute among themselves over the course of three articles ( 1 , 2 and 3 ), after which Tatterstable decided to publicly stop it - in the same manner in which the entire discussion was conducted.
By the way, some scientists believe that the brevity of presentation and, in particular, the ability to declare "zero" results are very important for modern science. For example, astrophysicist Chris Lintott from Oxford believes that the lack of information about failed experiments and research that ended in nothing means that other researchers are wasting time, money and other resources trying to go on a dead end. “A large amount of information that is valuable for scientists is lost due to the imperfection of the modern system of publishing scientific articles,” says the scientist.
Of course, the examples described above are extreme manifestations of brevity. However, most scientists and editors of scientific publications agree on one thing: the brevity of the author of a scientific article will never hurt. Of course, many scientific documents and materials contain specific terminology and momentum, and somewhere a scientist has to give lengthy comments and descriptions for the sake of accuracy. But the ability to create compact and capacious texts (even if not extremely short) is actively supported by the scientific community - after all, this is not an easy task, even for an experienced researcher.
For example, in the book “How to write and publish a scientific work,” its authors Robert Day (Robert Day) and Barbara Gastel (Barbara Gastel) write that in the annotations to their articles, scientists much more often include superfluous details than they miss something important. The titles of the articles are also sometimes too long - but for good reason: scientists from São Paulo have calculated that scientific articles with shorter headlines are more frequently viewed and quoted. And in the material of the Elsevier publishing house, the author directly advises to avoid arguments that are beyond the scope of the study, and any inaccurate expressions - all this will help make the material more compact.
Excessive brevity also has its drawbacks - for example, Stephen Heard, a scientist and author of the book The Scientist's guide to writing, when evaluating ultrashort scientific articles, writes that they are not without humor, but could be much more understandable and useful. , if their authors did not try to compete in wit.
On the other hand, as Stephen notes, “the reduction of material is the scientist’s direct task: there is no need to reflect all your thoughts in the text.” How then to choose the optimal volume of material? Stephen quotes American Naturalist magazine: "The article should be as long as necessary, but no more."
Photo by Zaheer Mohiuddin CC-BYMathematics - the standard of brevity
Mathematics is one of the disciplines in which brevity is fully justified: mathematical language is capacious and comprehensive, and formulas, diagrams, and illustrations can turn out to be “more effective than a thousand words.”
')
However, in 2005, scientists John Conway (Johm Conway) and Alexander Soifer (Alexander Soifer) decided to write "the shortest scientific article on mathematics in the world." The body of the article itself consists of two words (and two illustrations - they contain the answer to the question posed in the title).
At first, the American Mathematical Monthly Journal was skeptical of the article and asked to add “at least a couple of lines”. However, scientists did not give up and argued their position by saying that a respected scientific journal could not refuse to publish, based on the fact that it prefers the amount of [text] to its quality. As a result - not without a debate between the authors of the article and the editors of the journal - the material was nevertheless published.
However, despite the laconism of the mathematical language, examples of voluminous articles and publications in mathematics are not less, but even more. For example, the proof of the Robertson-Seymour Minor of the Count’s Minor Theorem took 500 pages and more than 20 articles (even a separate page on Wikipedia is devoted to voluminous proofs of the theorems).
When scientists have nothing to say
The brevity of a scientific article does not mean that it will take as much time to understand the material as directly to read (here, by the way, there is not much difference between an ultrashort and an ordinary scientific article - to thoroughly understand the material, no matter how concise it is presented, work hard).
However, in some cases, the understanding of the material really does not take much time - especially if there is not a single word in the article: neither specific terms, nor academic jargon, nor diagrams, nor even graphs and formulas.
This is what an article called “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of 'Writer's Block') written by Dennis Upper (Dennis Upper), published in 1974 in the respected scientific journal of Journal of applied behavioral analysis, looks like . It is usually called the "shortest scientific article in the world."
By the way, no matter how absurd it may sound, this “empty” article is not a single event in the scientific community: such materials have the right to exist, if only because in science the lack of results is also a result ( here is another example of such an article published in 1972 in the journal Linguistic Inquiry).
One might think that forty years ago scientific journals were simply more loyal to humor and self-irony. However, materials that convincingly demonstrate the lack of results are being created now. For example, in 2016, such work appeared in the German magazine Chemie in unserer Zeit - there is nothing in it except for the title and annotation. The article is called “A comprehensive review of consumer products that do not contain“ chemistry ”. According to scientists, the labeling "Chemical free" simply does not make sense, so, strictly speaking, there is nothing to observe in this case.
By the way, as Reddit users rightly point out , one of the main rules for reading scientific articles plays an especially important role in relation to such materials: it is important to carefully study the title and abstract.
Although sometimes attentive reading of everything that may be written about an article in general is not enough - sometimes a few stories and even dramas follow a couple of words in a scientific journal. For example, the article by Ian Tatterstall in the American Evolutionary Anthropology contains only two words - “Enough already.” In fact, this is an example of “article controversy” that has developed between Tatterstable and his anthropologist colleague Matt Cartmill. Scientists conducted a correspondence dispute among themselves over the course of three articles ( 1 , 2 and 3 ), after which Tatterstable decided to publicly stop it - in the same manner in which the entire discussion was conducted.
By the way, some scientists believe that the brevity of presentation and, in particular, the ability to declare "zero" results are very important for modern science. For example, astrophysicist Chris Lintott from Oxford believes that the lack of information about failed experiments and research that ended in nothing means that other researchers are wasting time, money and other resources trying to go on a dead end. “A large amount of information that is valuable for scientists is lost due to the imperfection of the modern system of publishing scientific articles,” says the scientist.
Brevity in science is only a plus
Of course, the examples described above are extreme manifestations of brevity. However, most scientists and editors of scientific publications agree on one thing: the brevity of the author of a scientific article will never hurt. Of course, many scientific documents and materials contain specific terminology and momentum, and somewhere a scientist has to give lengthy comments and descriptions for the sake of accuracy. But the ability to create compact and capacious texts (even if not extremely short) is actively supported by the scientific community - after all, this is not an easy task, even for an experienced researcher.
For example, in the book “How to write and publish a scientific work,” its authors Robert Day (Robert Day) and Barbara Gastel (Barbara Gastel) write that in the annotations to their articles, scientists much more often include superfluous details than they miss something important. The titles of the articles are also sometimes too long - but for good reason: scientists from São Paulo have calculated that scientific articles with shorter headlines are more frequently viewed and quoted. And in the material of the Elsevier publishing house, the author directly advises to avoid arguments that are beyond the scope of the study, and any inaccurate expressions - all this will help make the material more compact.
Excessive brevity also has its drawbacks - for example, Stephen Heard, a scientist and author of the book The Scientist's guide to writing, when evaluating ultrashort scientific articles, writes that they are not without humor, but could be much more understandable and useful. , if their authors did not try to compete in wit.
On the other hand, as Stephen notes, “the reduction of material is the scientist’s direct task: there is no need to reflect all your thoughts in the text.” How then to choose the optimal volume of material? Stephen quotes American Naturalist magazine: "The article should be as long as necessary, but no more."
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/343320/
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