I find that academic science, as a culture, really does require a bit more confidence than general life. It is possible that this is in part due to my field, which has many practitioners in the US. But I think it's just a science thing: peer review favours clearly stated results where the reviewers seem confident (and have the science to back them up). If you don't seem confident in your results, the question is why didn't you do more experiments until you could be confident?
And I guess that makes sense in the context of publishing results. I'm more off-put by the horrible language used than the requirement that one be confident in the science you do. :)
Re: Confidence
I find that academic science, as a culture, really does require a bit more confidence than general life. It is possible that this is in part due to my field, which has many practitioners in the US. But I think it's just a science thing: peer review favours clearly stated results where the reviewers seem confident (and have the science to back them up). If you don't seem confident in your results, the question is why didn't you do more experiments until you could be confident?
And I guess that makes sense in the context of publishing results. I'm more off-put by the horrible language used than the requirement that one be confident in the science you do. :)