My first reaction was "This person isn't in a hard science like physics or engineering. Maybe medicine?" Ayup--medicine.<p>Style can be annoying but <i>lack of context</i> is deadly.<p>"To our surprise, false positives were low (3%)." is not much of an improvement. "To our surprise, false positives were low (3%) as we expected closer to 10%." <i>IS</i> an improvement.<p>However, that statement in a hard science is going to cause people to start asking some questions: Is 3% actually low? Why was the expectation so high to start? Did you screw up your error bars? Is it <i>really</i> 3%? etc.<p>"It is difficult to find untainted samples." <i>Because</i> is missing. In addition, this comment is rarely germane. I, the reader, don't really care. That's <i>your</i> problem. Either find the samples to get to statistical power or get a different method. As the reader, I only care if you did something weird in order to sidestep the problem--<i>that</i> I want to know about.<p>All of the recommended things still retain "weaseliness" while trying to sound like they don't.<p>Finally, I would love to have his problem of merely cleaning up some weasel words when most students I know (even at the PhD level) still have trouble stringing together coherent arguments and understanding where the holes and weaknesses are.