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mrlolloran t1_j18sgxc wrote

If entire chapters are missing why didn’t they say so. It seems so obvious that that information would have been included in here that I cannot even fathom why it it would be omitted. I mean think of how much more weight the article could have. The only way that makes sense to me if it’s in the study but not the article about it and that frustrated the editor, who then editorialized the headline to match what they considered to be the importance of the study. Almost, but admittedly not quite, an ad absurdum fallacy to me given the lack of context.

It also would have been useful to include the average chapter length but maybe I either missed that or it’s in the more detailed study

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Swarna_Keanu t1_j18sx4h wrote

>If entire chapters are missing why didn’t they say so.

'Cause it's not what they measured. Happy to debate if that was good methodology or not ... but the study just is what it is. :)

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mrlolloran t1_j18to4r wrote

Studies usually have conclusions. I’m not actually a trained scientist, and I haven’t read this study, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never read a study. They looked at under 100 books, they could have and should have checked the table of contents, it would be all too easy to check this stuff. Frankly if they didn’t then I’d call it really bad methodology.

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Swarna_Keanu t1_j196ejt wrote

:) Welcome to the nonsense that happens due the the "publish or perish" mantra.

It's still informative in that the average sentences decreased. But you know - that's all it says, and all they checked. Would need to dig into the data for more. Might be that there'll be a follow up study in a couple years. And another, and another, which is when it becomes more of a useful data set.

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