Trends in the Expression of Epistemic Stance in NIH Research Funding Applications: 1985–2020.

This article examines changes in the expression of epistemic stance—writers' confidence and certainty regarding knowledge—in abstracts of projects funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1985 to 2020. Analyzing 901,717 abstracts for 140 linguistic features related to hedging and boosting, the study finds a clear trend toward less cautious and tentative language, with increased use of expressions conveying certainty, optimism, and promissory claims. Specifically, there is a decline in modal verbs and verbs that indicate possibility or subjective opinion (e.g., may, might, feel, indicate) and a rise in verbs and adverbs that assert objective fact and frequency (e.g., demonstrate, establish, often, widely). The authors attribute these shifts to growing salesmanship and structural and cultural changes in the research ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of analyzing individual linguistic features rather than aggregated categories to capture nuanced trends in grant writing.