How are the merits of innovative ideas communicated in science? Here we conduct semantic analyses of grant application success with a focus on scientific promotional language, which has been growing in frequency in many contexts and purportedly may convey an innovative idea's originality and significance. Our analysis attempts to surmount limitations of prior studies by examining the full text of tens of thousands of both funded and unfunded grants from three leading public and private funding agencies: the NIH, the NSF, and the Novo Nordisk Foundation, one of the world's largest private science foundations. We find a robust association between promotional language and the support and adoption of innovative ideas by funders and other scientists. First, the percentage of promotional language in a grant proposal is associated with up to a doubling of the grant's probability of being funded. Second, a grant's promotional language reflects its intrinsic level of innovativeness. Third, the percentage of promotional language predicts the expected citation and productivity impact of publications that are supported by funded grants. Lastly, a computer-assisted experiment that manipulates the promotional language in our data demonstrates how promotional language can communicate the merit of ideas through cognitive activation. With the incidence of promotional language in science steeply rising, and the pivotal role of grants in converting promising and aspirational ideas into solutions, our analysis provides empirical evidence that promotional language is associated with effectively communicating the merits of innovative scientific ideas.

翻译：科学中创新思想的优点是如何被传达的？本文通过对科研项目申请成功率的语义分析，聚焦于科学促销性语言——这种语言在许多情境中日益频繁出现，据称可能传达创新思想的原创性与重要性。我们的分析通过考察来自三大领先公共与私人资助机构（美国国立卫生研究院、美国国家科学基金会以及全球最大私人科学基金会之一诺和诺德基金会）数万份获资助与未获资助项目的全文，试图克服先前研究的局限性。研究发现促销性语言与资助机构及其他科学家对创新思想的支持和采纳之间存在显著关联。首先，项目申请书中促销性语言的占比最高可使项目获得资助的概率提升一倍。其次，项目中的促销性语言反映了其内在创新水平。第三，促销性语言占比能够预测受资助项目所支持发表论文的预期引用率与生产力影响。最后，一项通过计算机辅助实验操纵数据中促销性语言的实证表明，促销性语言如何通过认知激活机制传达思想的价值。随着科学领域中促销性语言使用率的急剧上升，以及科研项目在将前瞻性愿景转化为解决方案中的关键作用，我们的分析为“促销性语言与创新科学思想优点的有效传播存在关联”提供了实证证据。