Editors Comments revised 6 December 2009
The most common problems on abstracts for 2009:
Male and Female
Even though your hypothesis might have used the term “male” or “female” your abstract must clearly indicate what species the experiments involved. Therefore, titles and text that use the terms “men” and “women” or better still “young men” or “young women” or even better “college-aged men” or “college-aged women” are preferred.
Sensitivity
The term “sensitivity” must be used carefully. For example, to say that women are more sensitive to pain that men implies that the intensity of a stimulus that elicits the perception of pain is higher in men than females, which implies that women have a lower threshold than men for detecting a noxious stimulus. None of our hypothesis addressed issues of threshold and therefore the term “sensitivity” should be avoided. More specifically, many hypotheses addressed the number of sites that were sensitive to a particular stimulus modality (touch, pain, cold, or warm.)
Sensitive sites and sensory receptors
A sensory (a.k.a. afferent) neuron may have many branches at its tip and each one of those branches may detect the adequate stimulus. Thus, a single sensory neuron may have receptors in more than one of the “boxes” in the grid on the skin. Therefore, the number of sites that are sensitive to a given stimulus may not correspond to the number of sensory receptors or the number of sensory neurons. To be most accurate, abstract writers should use terms like “the number of touch-sensitive sites” or “cold-sensitive sites” or “pain-sensitive sites.”
Expressing numerical data and decimals
Be sure to state whether a one-tailed or two-tailed t-test was used and always state the p value with a zero preceding the decimal place (for example p = 0.024.) It is appropriate to express a p value to three decimal places, but experimental results obtained in this year’s set of experiment should never be expressed to more than one decimal place. For instance, the statement “women (n=16) had an average of 12.3457 ± 2.4486 (mean ± standard deviation) touch-sensitive sites on the palm” is going a bit too far! The fourth decimal place is the tenth-thousands position; it really possible to resolve to this level of precision? Certainly not, especially since all we were measuring were the number of “boxes” for which a subject indicated they perceived a touch.
Grammatical Errors
G1 Run-on sentence.
G2 Incorrect verb tense.
G3 Subject-verb disagreement.
G4 Hyphen should be used.
G4 Spelling error.
G5 Begin a new paragraph.
G6 Capitalize.
G7 Sentence ends with a preposition.
G8 Place the definition of a term in parentheses immediately after the term is used for the first time.
G9 Scientific writing should be in the third person, past tense (eg. The frog was pithed. Do not use “I” or “we.”)
G10 Begin a new sentence.
G11 Do not use gender-specific terms (e.g.: he, she)
G12 Incomplete sentence.
G13 If a sentence begins with a number, the number must be written out
(eg. Sixty-five .....)
G14 Don’t capitalize this word.
G15 Place an abbreviation of a term in parentheses immediately after the term is used for the first time.
Editorial Errors
E1 Excessive number of words. Shorten by better word selection.
E2 Eliminate this word or phrase.
E3 Repetitive use of a word.
E4 Use more specific or more formal terminology.
E5 Unclear what "it" refers to.
E6 Combine these two sentences or ideas.
E7 Do not place unrelated numbers together.
E8 This word is out of place.
E9 Non-sensical wording.
E10 Avoid using chronological terms like "then" or "next."
E11 Begin a new sentence.
E12 Place a zero before the decimal for all numbers less than 1 (e.g. 0.002)
Scientific Errors
S1 Purpose or hypothesis is missing.
S2 Purpose or hypothesis is poorly stated.
S3 Purpose or hypothesis is incorrectly stated.
S4 Insufficient description of methods.
S5 Description is too detailed given the space restriction.
S6 Insufficient description of results.
S7 Insufficient interpretation of results.
S8 Illogical flow or progression.
S9 Inaccurate statement.
S10 Information should be omitted because it is irrelevant or unnecessary.
S11 What was the purpose of this test?
S12 Don’t over-interpret the results.
S13 Don’t use “prove” or “conclude.” Scientific proof is virtually impossible. The data either supports or refutes the hypothesis. That is, the data is consistent with or inconsistent with the hypothesis. More effective words would be “demonstrates, suggests, shows, reveals” or some similar term.
S14 Your explanation is inaccurate.
S15 Present the results (means and standard deviations with number of subjects) before addressing the statistical test.
S16 Simply increasing the number of subjects is unlikely to alter the outcome of the statistical tests, especially if the number of subjects in each group is fifteen or more.
S17 A sensory nerve may have many branches at its tip and each one of those branches can detect the adequate stimulus. Thus, a single sensory neuron may have receptors in more than one of the “boxes” in the grid on the skin. Therefore, the number of sites that are sensitive to a given stimulus may not correspond to the number of sensory receptors or sensory neurons. To be most accurate, abstract writers should use terms like “the number of touch-sensitive sites” or “cold-sensitive sites” or “pain-sensitive sites.”
Detail Errors
D1 Where was the stimulus applied? For how long?
D2 Explain this term or phrase.
D3 Vague description...needs improvement.
D4 Be specific.
D5 Express numerical data to one decimal place. (Think about it; were you able to accurately measure 12.23647 mm with our lab equipment? Absolutely not. The best we could hope for would be one-tenth of a mm.
D6 State whether a one-tailed or two-tailed t-test was used.
Parameters Error
P1 Exceeded maximum page limitation.
P2 Font too small.
P3 Linespacing is not doublespace.
Congratulatory comments
C1 Well stated.
C2 Excellent choice of wording.
C3 Explanation well done.
C4 Excellent organization.
C5 Exemplary description.
C6 Excellent logical progression.