[zzleeper]

I wouldn't be so sure. Not talking about mathematics or CS, but in many social sciences (and also medicine and so on) the paper is just stating that A->B but i) there can be a lot more things going on that explain whatever correlation you are finding (from reverse causality to bad experimental setup), and *more importantly ii) in order to get published, you need to present a somewhat interesting or controversial statement.

If you state something obvious and most likely true, good luck getting to Nature/Science. If you state something unusual, then that will sell (where selling is getting citations) so you will see it published

[XorNot]

Asimov wrote an excellent piece on this - The Relativity of Wrong: http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

The Earth isn't flat, but it certainly approximates being flat for small measurements of its surface (such as those early civilizations would've been able to make).