Saturday, November 21, 2015

Hollywood Habits Reach Particle Physics

Usually, the abstract of a scientific journal article simply summarizes what the article says in a single paragraph (some longer, some shorter).  The main distinction among abstracts is between those that actually put their key conclusion in the lede, and those that bury the lede and tell you what the conclusion is about while forcing you to actually read the paper to get that result.

But, taking a cue from Hollywood, a researcher from the ALICE collaboration has gone one step further.  After the usual abstract telling you what the current paper says, she throws in one more sentence about coming attractions which are not actually included in the paper, stating: "Recent results obtained from these measurements will be presented and the measured cross sections will be compared to perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics calculations at next-to-leading order."

Now, admittedly, maybe she just means that they will present the results in this paper.  But, in context, it reads more to me like an announcement of an upcoming conference paper rather than a description of what is currently being presented.

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