Posted on 08/31/2022 6:16:51 AM PDT by FarCenter
The language used in grant applications is becoming increasingly hyperbolic, a study published last week (August 25) in JAMA Network Open finds. The study found that 130 research-hyping adjectives were used at a 1,378 percent higher frequency on average in funded application abstracts from 2020 than in those from 1985. “The findings in this study should serve to sensitize applicants, reviewers, and funding agencies to the increasing prevalence of subjective, promotional language in funding applications,” the authors write.
The team, comprised of two linguists and a biomedical researcher, began by using software to annotate the parts of speech in more than 900,000 abstracts in the National Institutes for Health (NIH) archive of funded projects. They then compared the frequency of adjectives between projects funded in 1985 and those funded in 2020, looking specifically for what they considered hype: “hyperbolic and/or subjective language that may be used to glamorize, promote, or exaggerate aspects of research,” according to the paper. While there was no statistically significant difference in the overall prevalence of adjectives between those two years, 1,888 of the descriptors exhibited marked shifts in frequency, 139 of which the researchers deemed to be hype.
Of those 139, 130 were used more often in 2020 than in 1985—including words like “transformative” and “impactful,” which increased in frequency by 8,190 percent and 6,465 percent, respectively. The word “sustainable” was more than 25,000 percent more common in the more recent set of abstracts, and some hype adjectives were not seen at all in 1985, such as “renowned,” “incredible,” “groundbreaking,” and “stellar.” Meanwhile, the hype adjectives “major,” “important,” “detailed,” and “ultimate” showed some of the largest decreases in frequency.
The team also grouped the 139 hype words into 8 semantic categories, finding that the largest per-million-word increases occurred to words that convey importance (50 percent increase) and novelty (207 percent increase). Overall, the percentage of abstracts containing at least one hype word rose from 72 in 1985 to 97 in 2020.
“Impactful”
Lol.
Apparently it is a real word—but a clue that the writer is a clown.
;-)
I applied for a Pell Grant back in the 1980’s. I was turned down because my parents received earned income from their jobs.
Using the word ‘sustainable’ indicates you are a fellow traveler.
Groundbreaking study.
Impactful.
Maybe even transformative.
Wonder how it was funded?
These are research grants.
But it sounds as though the researchers have their minds made up that their hypotheses are true.
next time I’ll try to read the story... The headline misled me.
Proposal writers always write what their target audience wants to hear. Or at least what they think their target audience wants to hear. The target audience for grants is always either government, ultra liberal foundations, or occasionally liberal corporations.
In very large institutions the researchers don’t even write the grants.
They have a separate department of writers who take the researchers’ data and fluff it up with colorful language.
“Sustainable”, “climate change”, “renewable”, etc. are inserted to give the government and reviewers big stiffies so they will fund the research.
Correct.
If your local government wants to create a sustainability board or committee, fight it tooth and nail, nothing good will come of it.
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