38 Science Research Writing ineff ective ineffi cient inferior infl exible insuffi cient meaningless misleading non-existent not addressed not apparent not dealt with not repeatable not studied not suffi ciently + adjective not well understood not/no longer useful of little value over-simplistic poor problematic questionable redundant restricted time-consuming unanswered uncertain unclear uneconomic unfounded unlikely unnecessary unproven unrealistic unresolved unsatisfactory unsolved unsuccessful unsupported (to be) confi ned to (to) demand clarifi cation (to) disagree (to) fail to (to) fall short of (to) miscalculate (to) misjudge (to) misunderstand (to) need to re-examine (to) neglect (to) overlook (to) remain unstudied (to) require clarifi cation (to) suff er (from) few studies have... it is necessary to... little evidence is available little work has been done more work is needed there is growing concern there is an urgent need... this is not the case unfortunately
Introduction — Vocabulary 39 Here are some examples of how these are used: • Few researchers have addressed the problem of... • Th ere remains a need for an effi cient method that can... • However, light scattering techniques have been largely unsuccessful to date. • Th e high absorbance makes this an impractical option in cases where... • Unfortunately, these methods do not always guarantee... • An alternative approach is necessary. • Th e function of these proteins remains unclear. • Th ese can be time-consuming and are oft en technically diffi cult to perform. • Although this approach improves performance, it results in an unacceptable number of... • Previous work has focused only on... • However, the experimental confi guration was far from optimal. Note: Some of these words/phrases express very strong criticism. A useful exercise is to put an asterisk (*) next to those you think you could use if you were talking about the research of your professor or supervisor. You can also alter them to make them more polite (i.e. instead of unsuccessful, which is quite a strong criticism, you could write may not always be completely successful). (to) attempt (to) compare (to) concentrate
(on) (to) conclude (to) describe (to) discuss (to) enable (to) evaluate (to) expect (is) organised as follows: (is) set out as follows: (is/are) presented in detail (our) approach (the) present work (this) paper (this) project (this) report (this) section (this) study (were/are) able to accurate/accurately eff ective/eff ectively effi cient/effi ciently excellent results innovation new novel method powerful practical