ArticleJournal of biosciences2025
'Tortured phrases' in biological, biomedical, chemical and environmental sciences.
Article in Journal of biosciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Linguistic, Orthographic, and Typographical Errors in Science (LOTS): A Growing Threat to Academic Integrity.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2026Article
- AI humanizers and the crisis of information integrity: implications for scientific writing.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
'Tortured phrases' (TPs) are a linguistic misrepresentation of established jargon or technical terms, and can thus be considered to be factual errors. By synonymizing jargon, TPs reduce the clarity of the scientific message. Given their unique nature, a growing literature on TPs is emerging, a summary of which is provided in this article. Supplementing this growing body of evidence, a curiously unique dataset is presented, namely, of 'sodium hypocrite', which is meant to represent sodium hypochlorite. Examples of TPs in the biological sciences are introduced. Papers that contain 'tortured phrases' should ideally be corrected to accurately represent the correct scientific terms they are currently misrepresenting. This responsibility falls on the shoulders of authors, editors and publishers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
41157903What OpenQuestion holds
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.