Something missing....

Too long, too complicated. A comment on my last blog listing my top 10 favourite scientific articles. It may have been too long. Although the list included examples of extremely concise reporting they were not short. I wanted to share these gems. My mistake was describing why I love them so much. We don't have time for stories, we don't have time to engage, empathise or simply absorb. We all want lists, sound bites and summaries. 

The philistines among you may be pleased to know that there are some very short papers within the literature. Reducing a complex dataset to a simple story is part of a scientific writer’s job but some authors have taken the goal of brevity to the extreme. 

As you might expect, the field of Mathematics has made some short-but-sweet contributions to the literature. In 1966, Leon Lander and Thomas Parkin published a paper that involved only two sentences in length [1]. Describing their work on a conjecture made by the mathematician Euler their contribution reflects the dream of every budding author in that it addresses an interesting and important question, it’s logic was irrefutable and it is (relatively) easy to understand.

You might think that this would be hard to beat but in 1974 the Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis published a paper by clinical psychologist Dennis Upper [2]. The paper, entitled ‘The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writers block”’, contained no words (zero word count). This didn't stop the manuscript’s reviewer from providing a glowing assessment:

“I have studied this manuscript very carefully with lemon juice and X-rays and have not detected a single flaw in either design or writing style. I suggest it be published without revision. Clearly it is the most concise manuscript I have ever seen-yet it contains sufficient detail to allow other investigators to replicate Dr. Upper's failure. In comparison with the other manuscripts I get from you containing all that complicated detail, this one was a pleasure to examine. Surely we can find a place for this paper in the Journal-perhaps on the edge of a blank page.”

I am a supporter of light-hearted additions to the literature as I feel they punctuate the vast publishing landscape. However, despite it echoing the current drive for brevity, Upper’s work is a whimsy rather than a serious work of science. The reviewer is clearly mistaken in their assumption that sufficient information is provided for anyone to be able to replicate Upper’s work. 

Mathematics came to the rescue of more traditional science in 2005 with the publication of John Conway and Alexander Soifer’s work on triangles [3]. The authors admit that from the outset they had intended to write the shortest paper ever, submitting a first draft that was made up of four words and two figures. The editors of their target journal were a little surprised and challenged them thus:

"The Monthly publishes exposition of mathematics at many levels, and it contains articles both long and short. Your article, however, is a bit too short to be a good Monthly article. . . A line or two of explanation would really help."

In what must be one of the more fruitful and amusing back-and-forth’s between author and editorial office, Conway responded,"I respectfully disagree [...] What else is there to explain?"In the end, the journal moved part of the original title into the body of the text, increasing the content to two sentences. And with this change it seems that the requirements of good science remained unchallenged [4]. The poetical among us might, however, argue that if a picture paints a thousand words the article was somewhat longer than it claims. 

There has been one other zero word count manuscript. This was described as a list of household products not including chemicals (doh!). It appeared in the German language journal Chemie in unserer Zeitin 2016 [5]. Nature Chemistry originally rejected the paper in 2014; however, the editors liked the idea and reported the submission in their blog along with a PDF version mocked up by the print production team. It's eventual home had a slightly lower Impact Factor than Nature Chemistry (0.5 vs. 28.8). 

Less heroic attempts at brevity have been achieved elsewhere within the literature. We have described previously in one of our Insider’s Insights how short titles can be beneficial (and detrimental) to an articles success. Similarly, there are some very short abstracts. 

The journal, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, published an article by John Doyle in 1978 on linear quadratic regulators in their correspondence section [6]. The title of the article was “Guaranteed margins for LQG regulators” and the abstract involved just three words – “There are none”. The articles title was also nice and short – though I would say they cheated by including an abbreviation (something I would never advise). Similarly notable is the contribution by a group from the H.W. Wills Physics Laboratory in Bristol and the Indian Institute of Technology. In 2011, particle physicists were caught unprepared in 2011 when it was observed that neutrinos could travel faster than light, breaking Einstein’s universal speed limit. While teams across the globe scrambled to confirm or deny the findings one team published an article entitled “Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?" [7]. Their abstract answered that question succinctly and bluntly: "Probably not”. 

The record for the shortest abstract ever must go to John Gardner and Leon Knopoff who published the seminal paper “Is the sequence of earthquakes in Southern California, with aftershocks removed, Poissonian?” in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America in 1974 [8]. Their abstract provided a one word answer to the their title – yes (and it's a short word).

In giving a thorough (and yet concise) account of brevity within the literature I should also mention what is probably the shortest editorial. In the November/December 2013 issue of Evolutionary Anthropology, biological anthropologist Ian Tattersall, who was curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, concluded a year of tit-for-tat editorial ‘discussion’ with colleague Matt Cartmill, an anthropologist at Boston University, with the statement: "Enough already" [9]. Though good friends the duo have been disagreeing on the subject of systematics, the study of the diversification of living forms and how it should be used, since the 1980s. This particular literary squabble began with Cartmill's paper "Primate origins, human origins, and the end of higher taxa," continued with Tattersall's "Higher taxa: An alternate perspective," continued again with Cartmill's "The end of higher taxa: a reply to Tattersall," after which Tattersall conceded "Enough already."

In conclusion, it is possible to report science concisely while retaining some degree of scientific rigour – and even introduce some humour. However, I still contest that manuscript authoring should contain some aspect of story telling for it to be practiced effectively. I suggest the articles described here are publishing oddities. 

Pressure to keep things short impacts on context, possibly pushing authors to not provide as thorough a connection to the literature delivering less measured and nuanced discussion of their findings in relation to the work of others. In short, if length impacts on the possible readership and publication of our work then we should worry that we are impacting on its communicative function. Less is not always more. As they say, the devil is in the detail. According to Wikipedia:

"The devil is in the detail" is an idiom that refers to a catch or mysterious element hidden in the details, meaning that something might seem simple at a first look but will take more time and effort to complete than expected and derives from the earlier phrase, "God is in the detail" expressing the idea that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; i.e. details are important.

Without detail there are no ‘facts’ to check. Without facts there is no way of discerning the veracity of what you are reading. This leaves our defences open to prejudice and bias of others. What do you think? Let me know.

Dr Tim Hardman is Managing Director of Niche Science & Technology Ltd., a bespoke services CRO based in the UK. He is also Chairman of the Association of Human Pharmacology in the Pharmaceutical Industry and an occasional commentator on science, business and the process of drug development.

References

1.    Lander L and Parkin T. Bull Amer Math Soc 1966; 72: 1079.

2.    Upper D. J App Behav Anal 1974; 7(3): 97–497.

3.    Conway J and Soifer A. Amer Math Monthly 2005; 112: 78.

4.    Soifer A. Mathematics Competitions 2010; 23 No 1.

5.    Goldberg AFG, et al. Chemie in unserer Zeit 2016; 50(2), 144–145.

6.    Doyle JC. IEEE Transactions Automatic Cont 1978; AC-23: 756–7.

7.    Berry MV, et al. J Phys A Math Theor 2011; 44: 492001.

8.    Gardner JK and Knopoff L. Bull Seismological Soc Am 1974; 64(5): 1363–1367.

9.    Tattersall I. Evol Anthropol 2013; 22.6: 293–293.