Who uses the word ‘truth’?

I have frequently heard the accusation that people working with natural/empirical sciences are in pursuit of the TRUTH. This is slander.

I, personally, do not use this word, and as far as my memory allows, I have not seen many scientific papers with this word in them. To make sure that my memory is not playing a trick on me, I decided to conduct a non-scientific study!

I have PDF copies of about 2700 published “scientific” papers on my laptop. About 95% of them are related to genetics/evolution. I searched all of my papers for the occurrence of the word ‘truth’ (by the advanced search option of Adobe Acrobat). I saved the results in an Excel file and marked different papers in different colors! Here are the results.

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• Total number of papers: 2679 papers;
• The word ‘truth’ appears in: 112 papers;
• The author(s) is not a natural scientist: 30 papers;
• The author(s) is a natural scientist, but the paper is more than 75 years old: 11 papers;
• Remaining papers: 71 papers.

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Out of the 71 remaining papers with the word ‘truth’ in them:

• Used by a natural scientist in a statistical context                                             25 papers.
• Used by a natural scientist as a figure of speech                                                10 papers.
• Used by a natural scientist in a philosophical way                                           36* papers.

*Please note that this group of 36 papers includes all cases where the separation of “philosophical truth”, “mathematical/statistical truth of a model or simulation”, and “figure of speech” was not easy. The list of papers in each category appears at the end of the text.

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The above results show that the word “truth” is used very seldomly (in a maximum of 1.5% of the scientific publications).

Conclusion:

The use of the word ‘TRUTH’ is very rare among natural/empirical scientists.

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LIST OF PAPERS

Items in the lists refer to the PDF filename that I use for my copies of scientific papers.

List of papers with the word ‘truth’ in them, but the author(s) is not a natural scientist:

• Barker_2015.pdf
• Berland_Reiser_2009.pdf
• Bradley_1995.pdf
• Brown_Hullender_2022.pdf
• Campos_2011.pdf
• Claus_1985.pdf
• Cohen_1985.pdf
• DeHaro_2020.pdf
• Elgin_Sober_2017.pdf
• Galavotti_2019.pdf
• Harrison_2007.pdf
• Harrison_2011.pdf
• Hathcoat_Meixner_2017.pdf
• Hood_2013.pdf
• Hull_1999.pdf
• Johnson_2017.pdf
• Lo_et_al_2015.pdf
• Melucci_1985.pdf
• MohanDas_2015.pdf
• Nagel_1974.pdf
• Niiniluoto_2018.pdf
• Norris_1996.pdf
• Olson_1968.pdf
• Popper_1961.pdf
• Rockman_2011_full.pdf
• Rosenblum_1994.pdf
• Struening_1996.pdf
• Walzer_1984.pdf
• Wilson_Sober_1994.pdf
• Ågren_2021.pdf

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List of papers with the word ‘truth’ in them, whose author is a natural scientist, but the paper is older than 75 years:

• Bateson_1901.pdf
• Blasco_2001.pdf (quote from 1936)
• East_1910.pdf
• Galton_1886.pdf
• Johannsen_1911.pdf
• Pearson_1903.pdf
• Pearson_1904.pdf
• Rockman_2011_full.pdf (quote from 1909)
• vanDijk_et_al_2022.pdf (quote from 1861)
• Wright_1923.pdf
• Yule_1902.pdf

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List of papers with the word ‘truth’ in them, whose author(s) is a natural scientist, but the word ‘truth’ is used as in a “mathematical/statistical ‘truth’ of a model or simulation”:

• Aalen_2004.pdf
• Auton_Abecasis_The_1000_Genomes_Project_Consortium_2015_s1.pdf
• Axelsson_et_al_2011.pdf
• Bakhshalizadeh_et_al_2021.pdf
• Burnham_Anderson_Manuscript_2004.pdf
• Byrska-Bishop_et_al_2021.pdf
• Carvajal_Rodriguez_2010.pdf
• Ding_et_al_2021.pdf
• Dudbridge_2013.pdf
• Frank_2012.pdf
• Gianola_2013.pdf
• Holland_1986.pdf
• Humphreys_et_al_2019.pdf
• Kerr_et_al_2005.pdf
• Lawson_et_al_2012.pdf
• Li_1956.pdf
• Meuwissen_Goddard_2007.pdf
• Monnahan_Kelly_2015.pdf
• Mu_et_al_2021.pdf
• Patxot_et_al_2021_SI.pdf
• Peng_et_al_2015.pdf
• Pook_et_al_2020.pdf
• Rubin_Arjas_2004.pdf
• Twomey_et_al_2021_Supp.pdf
• Wilson_et_al_2011.pdf

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List of papers whose with the word ‘truth’ in them, whose author is a natural scientist, but used the word ‘truth’ as a figure of speech:

• Aguilar_et_al_2020.pdf
• Davis_1998.pdf
• Fairbairn_1997.pdf
• Georges_2007.pdf
• Iles_2008.pdf
• Jacquard_1975.pdf
• Rushton_1989.pdf
• Vicens_Kieft_2022.pdf
• Wright_1983.pdf

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List of papers with word ‘truth’ in them, whose author is a natural scientist, and used the word ‘truth’ that could not be ruled out as “philosophical truth”:

• Boe_et_al_2019.pdf
• Buss_1995.pdf
• Chiappini_2001.pdf
• Chiappini_2014.pdf
• Crow_2002.pdf
• Dobzhansky_1973.pdf
• Epperson_1999.pdf
• Errington_et_al_2021.pdf
• Ewens_2016.pdf
• Goddard_2001.pdf
• Gould_Eldrege_1977.pdf
• Haldane_1964.pdf
• Hamilton_1964_I.pdf
• Kacser_Burns_1979.pdf
• Kamin_Goldberger_2002.pdf
• Kaplan_et_al_2016.pdf
• Kempthorne_1978.pdf
• Koltes_et_al_2019.pdf
• Lange_et_al_2014.pdf
• Leigh_2007.pdf
• Lemen_Freeman_1989.pdf
• Lewontin_1974.pdf
• Marjoram_et_al_2014.pdf
• Mayr_1977.pdf
• Morgan_Huttenhower_2012_Chapter_12.pdf
• Paaby_Rockman_2014.pdf
• Patterson_et_al_2006.pdf
• Payne_2012_Chapter_01.pdf
• Ripley_2004.pdf
• Rubin_2004.pdf
• Schadt_et_al_2009.pdf
• Searle_1991.pdf
• So_Sham_2010.pdf
• Stearns_2002.pdf
• Wei_Zhang_2019.pdf
• Wohns_et_al_2022_Supp.pdf

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