Field notes 1 piece · Science

Stories in data.

Visual essays on language, public data, and the things worth counting — plus the tools to go digging yourself.

By Joseph Kato — creator of Vale, a prose linter downloaded nearly ten million times and used by Microsoft, GitHub, and GitLab.

Analysis / / 4 min read Latest

The hedge words of science

Scientists are trained to qualify their claims. Across 2,400 arXiv abstracts, how much a field hedges turns out to track something simpler than caution — whether it observes the world or proves things about it. And despite the reputation, hedging isn't on the rise.