Deciphering Academese

“To the best of the author’s knowledge …” = “WE WERE TOO LAZY TO DO A REAL LITERATURE SEARCH.”
“Results were found through direct experimentation.” = “WE PLAYED AROUND WITH IT UNTIL IT WORKED.”
“The data agreed quite well with the predicted model.” = “IF YOU TURN THE PAGE UPSIDE DOWN AND SQUINT, IT DOESN’T LOOK TOO DIFFERENT.”
“It should be noted that …” = “OK, SO MY EXPERIMENTS WEREN’T PERFECT. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW??”
“There results suggest that …” = “IF WE TAKE A HUGE LEAP IN REASONING, WE CAN GET MORE MILEAGE OUT OF OUR DATA.”
“Future work will focus on … “ = “YES, WE KNOW THERE IS A BIG FLAW, BUT WE PROMISE WE’LL GET TO IT SOMEDAY.”
“…remains an open question.” = “WE HAVE NO CLUE EITHER”.

(copied from a comic from www.phdcomics.com, drawn by Jorge Cham if I read it right!)

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