| What he said | What he meant: |
|---|---|
| It has long been known that... | I haven't bothered to look up the original reference but.... |
| Of great theoretical and practical importance... | Interesting to me. |
| While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to these questions... | The experiment didn't work out, but I figured I could at least get a publication out of it. |
| The operant conditioning technique was chosen to study the problem... | The fellow in the next lab already had the equipment set up. |
| Three of the Ss were chosen for detailed study... | The results on the others didn't make sense. |
| Typical results are shown... | The best results are shown... |
| Agreement with the predicted curve is: | |
| Fair Poor Doubtful Imaginary |
| It is suggested that... It is believed that... It may be that... | I think. |
| It is generally believed that... | A couple of other guys think so too. |
| It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding... | I don't understand it. |
| Unfortunately, a quantitative theory to account for these results has not been formulated... | I can't think of one and neither has anyone else. |
| Correct within an order of magnitude... | Wrong. |
| Thanks are due to Joe Glotz for assistance with the experiments and to John Doe for valuable discussion. | Glotz did the work and Doe explained what it meant. |
MiIton H. Hodge, University of Georgia
