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To be fair, that doesn't appear to be a quote and the last few words of the sentence you quoted is important:

> ... offering a comparable energy capacity and cycling ability to some lithium-ion batteries already on the market.

Having said that, it seems they do claim in the paper that the performance of their "battery" (really, they only tested a single cathode composition) is "competitive to the commercial LiFePO4-graphite" base on extrapolation of their lab results "to practical large format cells".

I feel funny about that sort of extrapolation in an engineering context, but I'm not an electrochemist and also not a chemical engineer, and I have only skimmed through the abstract, introductions, and conclusions of the paper; so take this comment with a grain of salt.

Edit: typo. Also, I'm not out to trash the work in case my comment comes across as being harsh—marketing aside (which is, sadly, pretty common in high-impact journals), it does seem like a step forward.




The article used the word "some" multiple times, which is why I began to wonder about it. Weasel words are kind of a trigger for me.


On a personal level, I tend to agree with you because of some traumatic experiences with collaborators in the past.

But I think there is at least one valid reason for using imprecise terms in scientific journalism: it makes the content more accessible.




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