18 ms·

"To our surprise"

472 points by _Microft 5y ago

flakiness 5y ago
OT: My pet search on HN is "Disclosure I work" [1] (or "Disclaimer I work" [2]). You'll see a few company names pop up much more often than others. I've been wondering why. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22Disclosure%20I%20work%22&sort=byDate&type=comment [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22Disclaimer%20I%20work%22&sort=byDate&type=comment
- rbinv 5y ago
  Employee count, internal policies and (negative) brand perception are factors that come to mind.
- senbarryobama 5y ago
  I always notice this with Googlers.
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Some companies encourage you to to do this when you're discussing the company online. Even if you work on something totally unrelated at a company, it's a bad look if you sing the praises of a product and someone digs through your comment history and replies "Hang on, you work for the company that makes that product". Better to be upfront about any biases or caveats
- ironmagma 5y ago
  This is sometimes required if the company is publicly traded or a subsidiary thereof. To do so otherwise could be construed as stock manipulation.
- jonas21 5y ago
  You'll notice a great deal of those are from jefftk, who discloses who he works for in almost every comment. But in general, I think it's just that certain tech companies are big -- so they get discussed a lot on HN, and also employ a lot of HN users, thus requiring more disclosures.
  - H8crilA 5y ago
    > requiring more disclosures Just so we're clear, this is not actually "required". It's a combination of bragging rights, post credibility boost and (rarely) actual, official, authorized communication from the company.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - hoten 5y ago
      That's rather cynical. If an employer says I'm fine to talk about the company in public forums, but they only request I give a disclosure, then that's why I give a disclosure. Not some pointless brag. You can argue that legally or ethically I'm not required, but it seems a minor thing to do. Also, if you _don't_ disclose, there's a non-zero chance someone goes through your post history and finds you work at the company of interest, and what follows could be an accusation of shilling and attempting to deceive people by not making the connection apparent. Just as with a journalist, putting your biases upfront allows you and the reader to have a chance at a trustworthy dialogue.
    - simsla 5y ago
      I'd only mention it if I could be considered biased, or if it's relevant to the conversation. Disclaimer: it would indeed be silly in this comment
- atombender 5y ago
  My pet peeve is people writing "disclaimer" when they really mean "disclosure". A disclaimer denies responsibility. So if you're including a disclaimer that you work for Google, you're essentially saying that you take no responsibility for the consequences of your comment because of your employer.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    Charitably, I think the idea is something along the lines of: "Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for you mistakenly assuming that this comment is a independent review by someone unaffiliated and impartial.". (Though practically, it's probably just sloppy phrasing in a context where that sloppiness isn't much of a problem.)
_Microft 5y ago
I discovered the idea for this search a few days ago and found it intriguing. It is both broad as it is not restricted to a particular area of research and specific (for unexpected results) at the same time and seems to be directly probing the edge of our knowledge (At least I would call it that when researchers are being surprised by something in their fields). There is also the scientific article search of the Internet Archive if you are looking for another one to search through: https://scholar.archive.org/ https://scholar.archive.org/
- plaidfuji 5y ago
  It’s great because you don’t even have to click in to read the “surprising” result, even if it’s 100% jargon... > to our surprise, only one nonlinear method was superior to Salzer summation, namely the Wynn rho algorithm GASP!
adunk 5y ago
The query "to our surprise" currently shows around 219 000 results. The query "not surprising" has about 1 620 000 results. That's about 7 times as many. I have no idea if this is surprising or not. Somewhat more surprising is that the query "italian mad scientist" has 4 results in Google Scholar. Those are all due to the SCIGen fake scientific paper generator, which sometimes outputs this phrase: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/ https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/
- algorias 5y ago
  I would never write "to our surprise" in a paper. Rather, it would be "Surprisingly, ..." which fits the pattern of "Thus, ...", "Furthermore, ...", "In contrast, ..." etc, which is a nice and compact way of making the structure of an argument clearer. Surprisingly, when I do the same searches as you, I don't get anywhere near the same numbers.
  - foobarbecue 5y ago
    It seems you prefer passive voice.
    - vanviegen 5y ago
      Isn't that just the norm for scientific papers?
      - foobarbecue 5y ago
        Not in mine! I think you're right; it's my impression that passive voice has been the traditional style for scientific papers. However, the winds of change have been blowing for the last 15 or 20 years. Editors of most scientific journals now recommend using active voice wherever possible. I frequently fight with my collaborators over this. In a nutshell I think the passive voice style of science writing is unclear, and dishonest in that it pretends the researcher was not involved in the research. Check out p12 and p13 here: https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/events/professional-development/Slides/2015-04-09-active-passive.pdf https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/events/professional-d... and: http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/01/active_is_better_than_passive.html http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/01/active_is_better_th...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SKCarr 5y ago
Whenever I come across a typo in something I've published or in a paper I'm reading I'll do a google scholar search with quotes and see how many other people have made it. E.g. "expensively studied", https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22expensively+studied%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22expensively+studied%...
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  “We expensively studied the behavior of one hundred dollar bills when burnt at varying high temperatures” would be accurate and not a typo.
  - hluska 5y ago
    In Canada, the next sentence would be: “NSERC had temporarily suspended our funding so if you have any questions, I’ll be pulling double shifts at Tim Horton’s.”
  - Cerium 5y ago
    That reminds me - when I was younger I had trouble remembering how to spell definitely vs defiantly and would often get it wrong on my papers. So, I spent some time trying to think of a situation where it would not matter. I came up with the following: "My dad said I can't go to the party to night, but I'm [definitely/defiantly] going anyway.".
  - optimalsolver 5y ago
    Sounds like a very scientific rap video.
michaelhoffman 5y ago
"strikingly" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=strikingly https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=strikingly
- amelius 5y ago
  "to our excitement" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22to+our+excitement%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22to+our+excitement%22
  - plaidfuji 5y ago
    “Contrary to our expectation” https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=“contrary+to+our+expectation”&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=“co...
    - slver 5y ago
      "This escalated quickly" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=%E2%80%9Cthis+escalated+quickly%E2%80%9D&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=%E2...
      - ExtraE 5y ago
        “meta” https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=%E2%80%9Cmeta%E2%80%9D&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=%E2...
        valarauko 5y ago
        "and my axe" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22and+my+axe%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22...
- _Microft 5y ago
  "unexpectedly" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unexpectedly https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unexpectedly "astonishingly" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=astonishingly https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=astonishingly
mellosouls 5y ago
"It has not escaped our notice", without the famous one (a healthy starting point for new studies?)... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22it+has+not+escaped+our+notice%22+-crick https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22it+has+not+escaped+o...
for_i_in_range 5y ago
This is quite brilliant. Essentially querying certain power phrases in Google Scholar to see trends across disciplinary fields. I haven’t thought of doing this until now. Thanks for sharing.
geocrasher 5y ago
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22little+did+he+know%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22little+did+he+...
tpoacher 5y ago
I am extremely pleasantly surprised with the results for "source codes". I thought it'd be full of people making the grammatical error of using "source code" in the plural. It is happening so often these days that I get more and more frustrated by it...
- ausbah 5y ago
  does it really matter though?
  - Grimm1 5y ago
    We're engineers (or academics), pedantry is occasionally a hill we die on. Trying to be precise in language allows you to communicate an idea the most effective way, imo, and at the end of the day that's you're goal. At least it should be in technical writing. If the reader has to pause when they see "codes" instead of "code" because it's just a bit off then that is a tiny failing in your communication. Definitely not the end of the world, definitely not something to be an asshole about, but it is something I would maybe politely correct if I knew the person well enough. Also don't take this for me saying I'm perfect in my written communication. I still don't know how to use commas and I've had them explained to me from all grammatical standpoints multiple times. Trying is all you can do.
    - _delirium 5y ago
      Comp sci vs the natural sciences have an interesting split on this (though blurring more recently). Computer science tends to use "code" as a collective noun. Traditional usage in the natural sciences and parts of engineering is that "a code" (singular) is a single routine or piece of software to carry out some kind of numerical calculation or simulation. Then "codes" is just the normal plural when talking about more than one of them. So you find papers talking about things like "a new code for simulating preheating" [1] or "benchmarking simulation codes" [2]. [1] https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2008/11/009 https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2008/11/009 [2] https://doi.org/10.1109/PAC.2003.1289206 https://doi.org/10.1109/PAC.2003.1289206
ppod 5y ago
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q="approaching+significance" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q="app...
pradn 5y ago
"exercise to the reader" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22exercise+to+the+reader%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22...
- pnt12 5y ago
  The first paper seems like a critic of the attitude, which is a welcome change.
newsbinator 5y ago
"counterintuitively" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22counterintuitively%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22...
kizer 5y ago
Just ask GPT3 how many papers resulted in proving the negation of the hypothesis, and how many papers resulted in reasonably proving the hypothesis. And maybe inconclusive results for sake of completeness. It would be interesting to see the numbers, especially in the field of psychology.
- ExtraE 5y ago
  Is that a question GPT-3 can (accurately) answer?
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  And how many were written by GPT-3, while at it. Soon this will be a thing.
tephra 5y ago
Just to put it out there. This is a great title and idea for a podcast / blog.
- tbirdny 5y ago
  tooursurprise.com domain name is available.
  - rossdavidh 5y ago
    Did we expect that?
seigando 5y ago
This is one of my favorite posts
praptak 5y ago
Try searching for "this should never happen" in a bug tracker.
- b0ner_t0ner 5y ago
  Another one to try is "full disclosure" here on HN.
dvirsky 5y ago
My favorite phrases in academic papers are "leaves a lot to be desired", and of course "towards a ...." in the title.
xbar 5y ago
Lots of fun. I will avoid eating the uncooked liver of a boar.
aflag 5y ago
"according to collected data" - 1330 results "according to my mom" - 400 results "according to my dad" - 364 results Nice to see that nearly double of the data doesn't come from the researcher's parents.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  To be fair, Google scholar does not just search scientific works, I suspect many of these are from humanities journals.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
______- 5y ago
Evidence that science is mostly this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fuck-around-and-find-out https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fuck-around-and-find-out Although that Know Your Meme article focuses on politics, science has always been about professional mistake-making.
williesleg 5y ago
I'm surprised!
tunesmith 5y ago
Are we making fun of it? Indicating something as surprising is valuable because something that is surprising is something that has higher informative value. It seems to be a valuable and succinct indicator of a relevant point in the paper.
- kbelder 5y ago
  I think we're having fun with it, not making fun of it. Surprising results are great.
- _Microft 5y ago
  Not at all, see here for the reason why I submitted it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27074980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27074980
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    excellent, well done.
mnw21cam 5y ago
My favourite is still Experimental Brian Research https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22experimental+brian+research%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22experimental+brian+r... (taken from https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/feeling-stupid https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/feeling-stupid - it now has "about 103 results")
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > Dragert, K. , & Zehr, E. P. (20 1 2). High-intensity unilateral dorsiflexor resistance training results in bilateral neuromuscular plasticity after stroke. Experimental Brian Research, 225, 93- 1 04. > Attwell, D., & Laughlin, S. B. (2001). An energy budget for signaling in the grey matter of the brian. Journal of cerebral blood flow metabolism, 21(10), 1133-1145 Poor Brian!
- chris_wot 5y ago
  I limited the search to “brian research”, the first link takes me to a “Brian Research Centre”. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22brian+research%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22b...
Jimmc414 5y ago
"thoroughly debunked" can also make for an interesting read. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22thoroughly+debunked%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,1 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22thoroughly+debunked%...
- b450 5y ago
  This search is amusing because among the first few results is one referencing another: > Although the pristine myth has been thoroughly debunked, too many biodiversity researchers fail to incorporate historical ecology into their analyses. > Overall, we reject the notion that “the pristine myth has been thoroughly debunked” by archeological evidence, and suggest that the environmental impacts of historical peoples occurred along gradients[...]
FridayoLeary 5y ago
To my surprise, i was not aware of this version of Googles' search engine.
- glial 5y ago
  It is a real lifesaver for graduate students.
- _Microft 5y ago
  The Internet Archive has also a full-text article search (for older papers, iirc): https://scholar.archive.org https://scholar.archive.org "Sci Hub" is also popular in the science community. This is a shadow library that "collects" articles from other publishers websites and makes them available free of charge. Maybe the most important feature though is that it has a single search field and it does not matter where the article was initially published at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
randogp 5y ago
and patents as well https://patents.google.com/?q=%22to+our+surprise%22 https://patents.google.com/?q=%22to+our+surprise%22
optimalsolver 5y ago
intitle:"algorithm" "orders of magnitude speedup": https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=intitle%3A%22algorithm%22+%22orders+of+magnitude+speedup%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=inti...
dkasper 5y ago
"A novel approach"
einpoklum 5y ago
In one of the top 10 results, Wu and Liu say in 2004 that: > To our surprise, except from those applications in > graphics itself, GPU finds its applications in general > purpose computations in other fields, and it comes up as a > hot topic for research in recent 2 - 3 years. I don't see how this was very surprising even in 2004. A GPU accelerates regularly-parallel computation where bandwidth is more important than latency. On the other hand, you had to think in terms of "shaders", which is not very intuitive, and tooling was barely existent, so maybe it was a bit surprising.
Morizero 5y ago
My favorite search highlights a good pub's influence on academia: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22muddy+charles%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22muddy+charles%22
chuzz 5y ago
I have another phrase i like to search for, "pedagogical introduction", e.g: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=pedagogical+introduction&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=peda... https://arxiv.org/search/?query=pedagogical+introduction&searchtype=all&source=header https://arxiv.org/search/?query=pedagogical+introduction&sea... Many results are still to advanced but still this gives me insight into a lot of new topics.
new_guy 5y ago
'Surprising' is emotional noise that has no place in any scientific paper of value.

472 points by _Microft 5y ago

OT: My pet search on HN is "Disclosure I work" [1] (or "Disclaimer I work" [2]). You'll see a few company names pop up much more often than others. I've been wondering why. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22Disclosure%20I%20work%22&sort=byDate&type=comment [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22Disclaimer%20I%20work%22&sort=byDate&type=comment

rbinv 5y ago
Employee count, internal policies and (negative) brand perception are factors that come to mind.
senbarryobama 5y ago
I always notice this with Googlers.
Rebelgecko 5y ago
Some companies encourage you to to do this when you're discussing the company online. Even if you work on something totally unrelated at a company, it's a bad look if you sing the praises of a product and someone digs through your comment history and replies "Hang on, you work for the company that makes that product". Better to be upfront about any biases or caveats
ironmagma 5y ago
This is sometimes required if the company is publicly traded or a subsidiary thereof. To do so otherwise could be construed as stock manipulation.
jonas21 5y ago
You'll notice a great deal of those are from jefftk, who discloses who he works for in almost every comment. But in general, I think it's just that certain tech companies are big -- so they get discussed a lot on HN, and also employ a lot of HN users, thus requiring more disclosures.
- H8crilA 5y ago
  > requiring more disclosures Just so we're clear, this is not actually "required". It's a combination of bragging rights, post credibility boost and (rarely) actual, official, authorized communication from the company.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hoten 5y ago
    That's rather cynical. If an employer says I'm fine to talk about the company in public forums, but they only request I give a disclosure, then that's why I give a disclosure. Not some pointless brag. You can argue that legally or ethically I'm not required, but it seems a minor thing to do. Also, if you _don't_ disclose, there's a non-zero chance someone goes through your post history and finds you work at the company of interest, and what follows could be an accusation of shilling and attempting to deceive people by not making the connection apparent. Just as with a journalist, putting your biases upfront allows you and the reader to have a chance at a trustworthy dialogue.
  - simsla 5y ago
    I'd only mention it if I could be considered biased, or if it's relevant to the conversation. Disclaimer: it would indeed be silly in this comment
atombender 5y ago
My pet peeve is people writing "disclaimer" when they really mean "disclosure". A disclaimer denies responsibility. So if you're including a disclaimer that you work for Google, you're essentially saying that you take no responsibility for the consequences of your comment because of your employer.
- a1369209993 5y ago
  Charitably, I think the idea is something along the lines of: "Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for you mistakenly assuming that this comment is a independent review by someone unaffiliated and impartial.". (Though practically, it's probably just sloppy phrasing in a context where that sloppiness isn't much of a problem.)

_Microft 5y ago

I discovered the idea for this search a few days ago and found it intriguing. It is both broad as it is not restricted to a particular area of research and specific (for unexpected results) at the same time and seems to be directly probing the edge of our knowledge (At least I would call it that when researchers are being surprised by something in their fields). There is also the scientific article search of the Internet Archive if you are looking for another one to search through: https://scholar.archive.org/ https://scholar.archive.org/

plaidfuji 5y ago
It’s great because you don’t even have to click in to read the “surprising” result, even if it’s 100% jargon... > to our surprise, only one nonlinear method was superior to Salzer summation, namely the Wynn rho algorithm GASP!

adunk 5y ago

The query "to our surprise" currently shows around 219 000 results. The query "not surprising" has about 1 620 000 results. That's about 7 times as many. I have no idea if this is surprising or not. Somewhat more surprising is that the query "italian mad scientist" has 4 results in Google Scholar. Those are all due to the SCIGen fake scientific paper generator, which sometimes outputs this phrase: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/ https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/

algorias 5y ago
I would never write "to our surprise" in a paper. Rather, it would be "Surprisingly, ..." which fits the pattern of "Thus, ...", "Furthermore, ...", "In contrast, ..." etc, which is a nice and compact way of making the structure of an argument clearer. Surprisingly, when I do the same searches as you, I don't get anywhere near the same numbers.
- foobarbecue 5y ago
  It seems you prefer passive voice.
  - vanviegen 5y ago
    Isn't that just the norm for scientific papers?
    - foobarbecue 5y ago
      Not in mine! I think you're right; it's my impression that passive voice has been the traditional style for scientific papers. However, the winds of change have been blowing for the last 15 or 20 years. Editors of most scientific journals now recommend using active voice wherever possible. I frequently fight with my collaborators over this. In a nutshell I think the passive voice style of science writing is unclear, and dishonest in that it pretends the researcher was not involved in the research. Check out p12 and p13 here: https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/events/professional-development/Slides/2015-04-09-active-passive.pdf https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/events/professional-d... and: http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/01/active_is_better_than_passive.html http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/01/active_is_better_th...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SKCarr 5y ago

Whenever I come across a typo in something I've published or in a paper I'm reading I'll do a google scholar search with quotes and see how many other people have made it. E.g. "expensively studied", https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22expensively+studied%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22expensively+studied%...

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
“We expensively studied the behavior of one hundred dollar bills when burnt at varying high temperatures” would be accurate and not a typo.
- hluska 5y ago
  In Canada, the next sentence would be: “NSERC had temporarily suspended our funding so if you have any questions, I’ll be pulling double shifts at Tim Horton’s.”
- Cerium 5y ago
  That reminds me - when I was younger I had trouble remembering how to spell definitely vs defiantly and would often get it wrong on my papers. So, I spent some time trying to think of a situation where it would not matter. I came up with the following: "My dad said I can't go to the party to night, but I'm [definitely/defiantly] going anyway.".
- optimalsolver 5y ago
  Sounds like a very scientific rap video.

michaelhoffman 5y ago

"strikingly" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=strikingly https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=strikingly

amelius 5y ago
"to our excitement" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22to+our+excitement%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22to+our+excitement%22
- plaidfuji 5y ago
  “Contrary to our expectation” https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=“contrary+to+our+expectation”&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=“co...
  - slver 5y ago
    "This escalated quickly" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=%E2%80%9Cthis+escalated+quickly%E2%80%9D&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=%E2...
    - ExtraE 5y ago
      “meta” https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=%E2%80%9Cmeta%E2%80%9D&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=%E2...
      - valarauko 5y ago
        "and my axe" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22and+my+axe%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22...
_Microft 5y ago
"unexpectedly" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unexpectedly https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unexpectedly "astonishingly" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=astonishingly https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=astonishingly

mellosouls 5y ago

"It has not escaped our notice", without the famous one (a healthy starting point for new studies?)... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22it+has+not+escaped+our+notice%22+-crick https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22it+has+not+escaped+o...

for_i_in_range 5y ago

This is quite brilliant. Essentially querying certain power phrases in Google Scholar to see trends across disciplinary fields. I haven’t thought of doing this until now. Thanks for sharing.

geocrasher 5y ago

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22little+did+he+know%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22little+did+he+...

tpoacher 5y ago

I am extremely pleasantly surprised with the results for "source codes". I thought it'd be full of people making the grammatical error of using "source code" in the plural. It is happening so often these days that I get more and more frustrated by it...

ausbah 5y ago
does it really matter though?
- Grimm1 5y ago
  We're engineers (or academics), pedantry is occasionally a hill we die on. Trying to be precise in language allows you to communicate an idea the most effective way, imo, and at the end of the day that's you're goal. At least it should be in technical writing. If the reader has to pause when they see "codes" instead of "code" because it's just a bit off then that is a tiny failing in your communication. Definitely not the end of the world, definitely not something to be an asshole about, but it is something I would maybe politely correct if I knew the person well enough. Also don't take this for me saying I'm perfect in my written communication. I still don't know how to use commas and I've had them explained to me from all grammatical standpoints multiple times. Trying is all you can do.
  - _delirium 5y ago
    Comp sci vs the natural sciences have an interesting split on this (though blurring more recently). Computer science tends to use "code" as a collective noun. Traditional usage in the natural sciences and parts of engineering is that "a code" (singular) is a single routine or piece of software to carry out some kind of numerical calculation or simulation. Then "codes" is just the normal plural when talking about more than one of them. So you find papers talking about things like "a new code for simulating preheating" [1] or "benchmarking simulation codes" [2]. [1] https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2008/11/009 https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2008/11/009 [2] https://doi.org/10.1109/PAC.2003.1289206 https://doi.org/10.1109/PAC.2003.1289206

ppod 5y ago

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q="approaching+significance" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q="app...

pradn 5y ago

"exercise to the reader" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22exercise+to+the+reader%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22...

pnt12 5y ago
The first paper seems like a critic of the attitude, which is a welcome change.

newsbinator 5y ago

"counterintuitively" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22counterintuitively%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=%22...

kizer 5y ago

Just ask GPT3 how many papers resulted in proving the negation of the hypothesis, and how many papers resulted in reasonably proving the hypothesis. And maybe inconclusive results for sake of completeness. It would be interesting to see the numbers, especially in the field of psychology.

ExtraE 5y ago
Is that a question GPT-3 can (accurately) answer?
trompetenaccoun 5y ago
And how many were written by GPT-3, while at it. Soon this will be a thing.

tephra 5y ago

Just to put it out there. This is a great title and idea for a podcast / blog.

tbirdny 5y ago
tooursurprise.com domain name is available.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Did we expect that?

seigando 5y ago

This is one of my favorite posts

praptak 5y ago

Try searching for "this should never happen" in a bug tracker.

b0ner_t0ner 5y ago
Another one to try is "full disclosure" here on HN.

dvirsky 5y ago

My favorite phrases in academic papers are "leaves a lot to be desired", and of course "towards a ...." in the title.

xbar 5y ago

Lots of fun. I will avoid eating the uncooked liver of a boar.

aflag 5y ago

"according to collected data" - 1330 results "according to my mom" - 400 results "according to my dad" - 364 results Nice to see that nearly double of the data doesn't come from the researcher's parents.

whimsicalism 5y ago
To be fair, Google scholar does not just search scientific works, I suspect many of these are from humanities journals.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

______- 5y ago

Evidence that science is mostly this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fuck-around-and-find-out https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fuck-around-and-find-out Although that Know Your Meme article focuses on politics, science has always been about professional mistake-making.

williesleg 5y ago

I'm surprised!

tunesmith 5y ago

Are we making fun of it? Indicating something as surprising is valuable because something that is surprising is something that has higher informative value. It seems to be a valuable and succinct indicator of a relevant point in the paper.

kbelder 5y ago
I think we're having fun with it, not making fun of it. Surprising results are great.
_Microft 5y ago
Not at all, see here for the reason why I submitted it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27074980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27074980
- tunesmith 5y ago
  excellent, well done.

mnw21cam 5y ago

My favourite is still Experimental Brian Research https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22experimental+brian+research%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22experimental+brian+r... (taken from https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/feeling-stupid https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/feeling-stupid - it now has "about 103 results")

whimsicalism 5y ago
> Dragert, K. , & Zehr, E. P. (20 1 2). High-intensity unilateral dorsiflexor resistance training results in bilateral neuromuscular plasticity after stroke. Experimental Brian Research, 225, 93- 1 04. > Attwell, D., & Laughlin, S. B. (2001). An energy budget for signaling in the grey matter of the brian. Journal of cerebral blood flow metabolism, 21(10), 1133-1145 Poor Brian!
chris_wot 5y ago
I limited the search to “brian research”, the first link takes me to a “Brian Research Centre”. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22brian+research%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22b...

Jimmc414 5y ago

"thoroughly debunked" can also make for an interesting read. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22thoroughly+debunked%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,1 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22thoroughly+debunked%...

b450 5y ago
This search is amusing because among the first few results is one referencing another: > Although the pristine myth has been thoroughly debunked, too many biodiversity researchers fail to incorporate historical ecology into their analyses. > Overall, we reject the notion that “the pristine myth has been thoroughly debunked” by archeological evidence, and suggest that the environmental impacts of historical peoples occurred along gradients[...]

FridayoLeary 5y ago

To my surprise, i was not aware of this version of Googles' search engine.

glial 5y ago
It is a real lifesaver for graduate students.
_Microft 5y ago
The Internet Archive has also a full-text article search (for older papers, iirc): https://scholar.archive.org https://scholar.archive.org "Sci Hub" is also popular in the science community. This is a shadow library that "collects" articles from other publishers websites and makes them available free of charge. Maybe the most important feature though is that it has a single search field and it does not matter where the article was initially published at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

randogp 5y ago

and patents as well https://patents.google.com/?q=%22to+our+surprise%22 https://patents.google.com/?q=%22to+our+surprise%22

optimalsolver 5y ago

intitle:"algorithm" "orders of magnitude speedup": https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=intitle%3A%22algorithm%22+%22orders+of+magnitude+speedup%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=inti...

dkasper 5y ago

"A novel approach"

einpoklum 5y ago

In one of the top 10 results, Wu and Liu say in 2004 that: > To our surprise, except from those applications in > graphics itself, GPU finds its applications in general > purpose computations in other fields, and it comes up as a > hot topic for research in recent 2 - 3 years. I don't see how this was very surprising even in 2004. A GPU accelerates regularly-parallel computation where bandwidth is more important than latency. On the other hand, you had to think in terms of "shaders", which is not very intuitive, and tooling was barely existent, so maybe it was a bit surprising.

Morizero 5y ago

My favorite search highlights a good pub's influence on academia: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22muddy+charles%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22muddy+charles%22

chuzz 5y ago

I have another phrase i like to search for, "pedagogical introduction", e.g: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=pedagogical+introduction&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=peda... https://arxiv.org/search/?query=pedagogical+introduction&searchtype=all&source=header https://arxiv.org/search/?query=pedagogical+introduction&sea... Many results are still to advanced but still this gives me insight into a lot of new topics.

new_guy 5y ago

'Surprising' is emotional noise that has no place in any scientific paper of value.