To hedge or not to hedge
Writers write for their readers, and good writers write so that their readers will understand them easily. Although this applies to academic writing as well, writers of research papers also have other purposes and often write to establish priority—to be the first to report a discovery—and to contribute to the body of literature in their field. Academic writers also have other concerns, one important concern being the impression they make on reviewers and, once the paper is published, on peers. These concerns often compel writers of academic papers to write in ways that can make their articles appear unclear, weak, or difficult to lay readers. Hedging is used for dealing with one such concern.
When you hedge your bets, you bet on multiple outcomes to increase your chances of winning—any one of those outcomes makes you a winner. Hedging in academic writing works similarly, but writers use it not so much to maximize their chances of winning (of being easily understood by their readers) as to minimize their chances of losing, i.e., of being proven wrong by their readers. A simple example will make this clear: instead of writing categorically and emphatically, as in “Watering the plants before sunrise or after sunset makes plants to grow faster,” an academic writer hedges, or tones down the emphasis, by writing “Watering the plants before sunrise or after sunset probably helps plant growth.” Adding “probably” and using an abstract noun (‘growth’) instead of the verb (‘to grow’) makes the assertion less emphatic and keeps the escape route open, should a fellow academic point out that the claimed benefits of watering early or late in the day also depend on the plant, the soil, and the weather.
Another reason why academic writers often hedge is the uncertainty that is inseparable from science. Even the most common physical laws have been shown to change when objects are observed on the nanoscale. Secondly, most phenomena of interest to science, especially applied science, are governed by too many factors to allow simple statements of cause and effect. You have a headache, you take a tablet, and you are cured—does it mean that it was the tablet that cured you of the headache? Probably yes, but not necessarily: What if it was not the tablet but simply time or something that you ate or something that you did or something that you were exposed to? Much of the advice on effective academic writing ignores these constraints, whereas the truth is that scientists cannot deal in absolutes, especially those who work in biology, a field in which variation is the norm. In The Summing Up, his autobiographical work, Somerset Maugham recounts a lesson in anatomy, namely, that it is the normal that is rare, because norms are abstract ideals based on many observations but seldom apply to any specific case.
Hedging is therefore unavoidable in academic writing. Unfortunately, hedging is also used for covering up sloppy research, insufficient data, small or biased samples, and muddy thinking—and that is something you should avoid. Hedging also gets a bad name because some writers overdo it: “It is believed that sunning may possibly counter, to some extent and under certain circumstances, the deficiency of vitamin D in some individuals.”
Here are some practical tips on how to use hedging in your writing.
Avoid multiple hedges within a sentence. The above example was a made-up one, simply to illustrate multiple hedging. In practice, any one of the many words associated with uncertainty should have been sufficient. For example, when you use “may,” it is clear to readers that you are talking about a possibility, as in “It may rain.” The word “possibly” serves the same purpose, as do the qualifiers, namely, “to some extent,” “under certain circumstances,” and “some individuals.”
Learn the degrees of uncertainly implied by different words. The difference between “It may rain” and “It might rain” is simply that of the degree of uncertainty or likelihood, with “might” implying greater uncertainty. Another such pair is “possible” and “probable.” “Possible” implies that something is physically possible, as in “The error was possibly due to a defective instrument,” which means that a defective instrument was one of the several possible causes (it could have been a simple error in calculation or a misreading of the instrument’s display, for example). “Probable” implies that something is likely, as in “The error was probably due to a mistake in calculation.”
Use appropriate qualifiers. Using modal auxiliary verbs such as “may,” “can,” and “should” is one way to express uncertainty. Another way is to use qualifiers such as “some,” “nearly,” and “almost.” Qualifiers restrict the scope of an assertion: for example, instead of saying “All wounds heal faster by local application of cream A” you can say “some wounds” or “nearly all wounds” and so on, depending on how confident you are about the efficacy of cream A.
Warn readers up front. Instead of sprinkling hedges throughout a block of prose, you can warn readers up front of any uncertainty. For instance, say that the conclusions are based only on anecdotal evidence or on a non-random sample. If you know of the likely causes of the difference in results, mention them, as in “These experiments were conducted under controlled conditions, and the results of field experiments may be different” or “A representative sample is likely to offer more reliable data.”
Above all, be honest with your readers: admit uncertainties by using appropriate hedging devices but do not use them as a cover up: remember the drunk who uses a lamppost not for illumination but for support?
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