Abstract vs. paper

• Sep 24, 2020 • by Paul Ingraham

Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

“ROAR!” said the abstract of the scientific paper. “Mew!” said the actual data in the paper.

Full credit to @Geistb0t for the visual joke. I liked it so much I had to turn it into a single-image meme. I will probably find several uses for it on PainScience.com, but this it’s most obvious new home: The “Impress Me” Test: Most controversial therapies are fighting over scraps of “positive” evidence that damn them with faint praise.

See also this older one, expressing almost exactly the same idea in a very different way:

Also fun! But cats are better. 🐱