On: Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

[SapporoChris]

"She remained with it for several hours and possibly even days." Interesting article, but that comment veers into speculation. Speculation diminishes the value of a scientific article.

[Laakeri → SapporoChris]

I'd say it instead makes it more precise, indicating that they are uncertain but the range is from several hours to days.

[adzm → SapporoChris]

I'm confused by how that is speculation.

[SapporoChris → adzm]

The key word is possibly. Any statement with possibly in it could be true or false, it is speculation.

[nexie → SapporoChris]

Fair, but does that mean that the entire article is speculative? They were not around long enough to confirm whether or not it happened for days, but the fact that the mother stayed for at least some hours appears to be confirmed (although as another reply said, the motivation for staying could be different than ours).

You will likely find a lot of these hedging comments in scientific articles, as it’s hard to know and prove something with 100% certainty and it’s an important task for researchers to also indicate the limits of what they’ve discovered. I think ;)

[pastel8739 → SapporoChris]

Rather, the word “possibly” indicates uncertainty, the very foundation of science.

[phs318u → SapporoChris]

They are indicating a range (hours to days) for a value, and the “possibly” qualifier indicates some uncertainty in the range’s upper bound.