Page 232 - English for Writing Research Papers

Chapter 13

Abstracts

Factoids: Unusual abstracts

In their paper Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a
quantum weak measurement ? the authors wrote possibly the shortest abstract
ever: Probably not .
*****
Not quite as short as the Abstract above is this : A zipper-entrapped penis is a
painful predicament that can be made worse by overzealous intervention.
Described is a simple, basic approach to release, that is the least traumatic to
both patient and provider . The key words to the paper are: zipper; foreskin/
penile skin; bone cutter .
*****
A paper published in 2014 was co-authored by four economists all with the
same surname – Goodman. Their 3-sentence abstract was: We explore the
phenomenon of coauthorship by economists who share a surname. Prior
research has included at most three economist coauthors who share a sur-
name. Ours is the first paper to have four economist coauthors who share a

surname, as well as the first where such coauthors are unrelated by marriage,
blood or current campus.
*****

God does not play dice. He flips coins instead . So began Carlos Mochon's
abstract to his paper entitled Quantum weak coin flipping with arbitrarily

small bias.
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The Socceral Force by Norbert Bátfia began: We have an audacious dream,
we would like to develop a simulation and virtual reality system to support the
decision making in European football (soccer).
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The abstract to a paper entitled Pressures produced when penguins pooh–
Calculations on avian defecation ends as follows: Whether a bird chooses the
direction into which it decides to expel its faeces, and what role the wind plays
in this, remain unknown .
*****
The last line of the abstract to a paper entitled Fractcal Analysis of Deep Sea
Topography is: No attempt has been made to understand this result.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 217
A. Wallwork, English for Writing Research Papers,
English for Academic Research, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26094-5_13