How Recent is "Recent"?
hubie writes:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word recent is defined as "having happened or started only a short time ago." A simple, innocent sounding definition. And yet, in the world of scientific publishing, it may be one of the most elastic terms ever used. What exactly qualifies as "a short time ago"? A few months? A couple of years? The advent of the antibiotic era?
In biomedical literature, "recent" is something of a linguistic chameleon. It appears everywhere: in recent studies, recent evidence, recent trials, recent literature, and so forth. It is a word that conveys urgency and relevance, while neatly sidestepping any commitment to a specific year-much like saying "I'll call you soon" after a first date: reassuring, yet infinitely interpretable. Authors wield it with confidence, often citing research that could have been published in the previous season or the previous century.
Despite its ubiquity, "recent" remains a suspiciously vague descriptor. Readers are expected to blindly trust the author's sense of time. But what happens if we dare to ask the obvious question? What if we take "recent" literally?
In this festive horological investigation, we decided to find out just how recent the recent studies really are. Armed with curiosity, a calendar, and a healthy disregard for academic solemnity, we set out to measure the actual age of those so-called fresh references. The results may not change the course of science, but they might make you raise an eyebrow the next time someone cites a recent paper from the past decade.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.