Why do some, if not all, scientific papers use inconclusive language/words like “could”, “may”, “suggests”, “indicates” ?

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Purposefully “vague” or “inconclusive” language like the following examples are frequently used in studies:

“Our study indicates that”

“The findings suggest”

“We postulate to…”

“may stop germs”

Why is this? Is it simply because they literally can’t conclude anything 100%? I read the following quote on a different thread, and perhaps this could somehow lead me to an answer, ” Science cannot prove; it can only disprove”?

Many thanks!

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8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

These statements aren’t vague, they are deliberate to not imply a level of confidence that is not warranted. In particular these studies may have found a correlation, and so they cannot have a high level of confidence that their hypothesised causal link is valid. “Our study indicates…” is much stronger than “we postulate…”. The former implies that the results support the statement, the latter does not.

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