weasel words
It has become the custom for authors of scientific papers to make a statement about conflict of interest. I have been seeing a recurrent wording in papers by Chinese authors:
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
A paper I just finished editing had that wording as one of two options that could have a check mark placed by it, which makes it appear to be an actual official wording that authors are supposed to use.
Now, the thing is, that wording doesn't actually say that there aren't conflicts of interest. It says that there are no known competing interests-known to who? Are the authors saying, "Well, we don't know of any"? Or are they saying "Well, our readers don't know of any"? And it says appeared to influence-as if the issue is not whether or not the authors actually were objective, but whether or not their results look dubious. A fact-centered wording could say The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper-but that's not what they provide.
It may be that this is simply a matter of the wording not coming from native English speakers, or of its having been adopted by some official and made standard. But it all makes me think of the idea of "social metaphysics" that Ayn Rand used to talk about: The idea that what matters is not what actually happened or what you actually did, but how other people see you. And that also suggests the idea of "face" that used to be described as a theme of East Asian cultures.
In any case, it always make me wonder a little about the quality of the research.
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
A paper I just finished editing had that wording as one of two options that could have a check mark placed by it, which makes it appear to be an actual official wording that authors are supposed to use.
Now, the thing is, that wording doesn't actually say that there aren't conflicts of interest. It says that there are no known competing interests-known to who? Are the authors saying, "Well, we don't know of any"? Or are they saying "Well, our readers don't know of any"? And it says appeared to influence-as if the issue is not whether or not the authors actually were objective, but whether or not their results look dubious. A fact-centered wording could say The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper-but that's not what they provide.
It may be that this is simply a matter of the wording not coming from native English speakers, or of its having been adopted by some official and made standard. But it all makes me think of the idea of "social metaphysics" that Ayn Rand used to talk about: The idea that what matters is not what actually happened or what you actually did, but how other people see you. And that also suggests the idea of "face" that used to be described as a theme of East Asian cultures.
In any case, it always make me wonder a little about the quality of the research.