[sieste]

> “Regular patterns of drought and precipitation have been found to coincide with cycles of sunspot activity”

> which can be simplified to:

> “Regular patterns of drought and precipitation coincide with cycles of sunspot activity”

> Not only the phrase “have been found” adds nothing to the prose, it also does not state the subject. Removing the phrase will make the prose above more concise.

This, and by leaving out the weasly "have been found" you take ownership of the statement, which forces you to be more careful and critical when citing other people's results.

[keiferski]

That's not how science works. "Have been found" is not a weasel phrase, it's an accurate description of empirical observations.

[kd5bjo]

It is a weasel phrase: It gets you out of citing your source for the information, which deprives the reader of judging its accuracy for themselves. I'd probably write it this way:

"Jones (2018) showed that regular patterns of drought and precipitation coincide with cycles of sunspot activity."

[BigJ1211]

It also implies you weren't the one to find it and are you relaying that information to the reader.

[throwaway_pdp09]

I'm a little cautious of that. “have been found” implies a correlation but reserves some doubt; to omit it is to say the correlation is extremely strong, effectively beyond doubt. That's a strong implication. To leave that quaifier phrase in suggests the author recognises the signal is noisy and some other experts may disagree about the correlation being present.

Anyway, I really appreciate this kind of thing. There's too much bullshit writing and I'm glad someone is pushing back.

(Edited for clarity)

[adamfaliq]

OP here. Taking ownership of the statement is an interesting perspective. I've never thought of that. In my experience, when I take ownership, my writing tends to feel more honest. I acknowledge what I know or don't know, which makes the writing clearer for the readers.