Don’t Be a Modal Weasel

I often hear academics say things like: “It is not necessarily the case that the evidence would support that.”

Is this sentence meaningless or just trivial? I don’t know, but I am still surprised by how many otherwise reasonable people hide behind such verbiage. Other common examples of the defensive use of modal diction:

1. “It could be impossible.”

2. “It’s certainly possible.”

3. “It mustn’t be inherently so.”

4. “It must indeed be admitted both that it would require powerful arguments to...