STUDY SKILL Interpreting meaning
Most academic and scientific articles express facts (what happened), and speculate (guess). It is important to be able to distinguish uncertainty and speculation from fact.
Uncertainty and speculation can be expressed using:
may, could, might before the main verb, e.g.
Air pollution may be a much greater danger to our health... Polluted air could lead to three times as many... problems.
verbs such as believe, claim, think, hope, seem, e.g.
Dr Razia... believes there is a connection between the number of particles in the air and health.
words and phrases, e.g. possibly, probably, it is possible