ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
Heavy use of equations impedes communication among biologists.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Let's DAG in: how directed acyclic graphs can help behavioural ecology be more transparent.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
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- Poor hypotheses and research waste in biology: learning from a theory crisis in psychology.BMC biology · 2025Review
- Six personas to adopt when framing theoretical research questions in biology.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- A memory-theoretic account of citation propagation.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- EcoEvoApps: Interactive apps for theoretical models in ecology and evolutionary biology.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Basic quantitative morphological methods applied to the central nervous system.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2021Review
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- From solution to surface to filament: actin flux into branched networks.Biophysical reviews · 2018Review
- Inferring clonal structure in HTLV-1-infected individuals: towards bridging the gap between analysis and visualization.Human genomics · 2017Article
- A three-parameter two-state model of receptor function that incorporates affinity, efficacy, and signal amplification.Pharmacology research & perspectives · 2017Article
- Shedding light on the 'dark side' of phylogenetic comparative methods.Methods in ecology and evolution · 2016Article
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- Development and Assessment of Modules to Integrate Quantitative Skills in Introductory Biology Courses.CBE life sciences education · 2016Article
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2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Most research in biology is empirical, yet empirical studies rely fundamentally on theoretical work for generating testable predictions and interpreting observations. Despite this interdependence, many empirical studies build largely on other empirical studies with little direct reference to relevant theory, suggesting a failure of communication that may hinder scientific progress. To investigate the extent of this problem, we analyzed how the use of mathematical equations affects the scientific impact of studies in ecology and evolution. The density of equations in an article has a significant negative impact on citation rates, with papers receiving 28% fewer citations overall for each additional equation per page in the main text. Long, equation-dense papers tend to be more frequently cited by other theoretical papers, but this increase is outweighed by a sharp drop in citations from nontheoretical papers (35% fewer citations for each additional equation per page in the main text). In contrast, equations presented in an accompanying appendix do not lessen a paper's impact. Our analysis suggests possible strategies for enhancing the presentation of mathematical models to facilitate progress in disciplines that rely on the tight integration of theoretical and empirical work.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.