All rules

Weasel words

weasel-wordon by default (info)Japanese / English

Phrases like "many experts say" or "studies show" that credit no one

Example

How to fix

Name who said it or which study shows it (a name, a year, a source). If you cannot, state it as your own claim, or drop it.

Why it matters

"Many experts say", "it is widely believed" and "studies show" (と言われています, ある研究によると) lend a claim to an unnamed crowd or to research no one names. The reader cannot check who said it, and the writer need not stand behind it. The phrases are listed in the lexicon.

What it does not flag

Only the phrases on chaff's list are checked. A citation right after the phrase does not silence it, since the sentence can name the study itself. In Japanese, 研究によると and 専門家によると, which often follow their source, are checked only as ある・最近の・多くの forms, と言われる only as と言われている (not よく言われる, which mostly talks about the saying itself), and 一般的に alone is not checked. Nor is a quotation reported as told on an occasion or by a named sayer (申し込んだら、「…」と言われています, 業者から「…」と言われている), since someone did say it.

Turning it off or relaxing it

This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/weasel-word.yaml