"To our knowledge, this is the ..."

[IamAporcupine]

Same as a previous thread, I know I read somewhere that saying "to our knowledge, this is the best/largest/etc study" is not very good scientific writing.

Does anyone else know what I am talking about?
I cannot find the source!

I've seen it used a lot ...

I don’t know, but have you looked at the Manchester University academic phrase bank www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/ ?

And it's probably not true... I reviewed a paper while back that said "To our knowledge we are the first paper to..." I promptly found 3 or 5 other papers that had looked into the exact same question using same methods. The other referees were even more unkind.

I have written "Our study appears to be the first that..."

@MedSchoolRat - exactly, that was the idea!

Your 'appears to be' has it covered, I guess?

@impostersyndrome - that's very useful thanks!