We present experimental results from a web-based study on the speech act of giving advice in French. 86 L1 speakers of French had to continue short and written fictitious interactions we created, in which we manipulated the adviser’s level of experience (explicitly experienced, explicitly inexperienced, or no precision) and the hierarchical relationship between adviser and advisee (top-down, bottom-up, and equals). Participants had to choose between four types of continuations, from indirect strategies to direct prototypical imperative strategies, with variations of the face-threatening value in some continuations, as per Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory. Main results from Bayesian regression analyses indicate an overall preference for indirect strategies in French, but also suggest influences from the level of experience and hierarchical relationship. These results will allow for a better understanding of advice as a speech act and contribute to a growing body of work in experimental pragmatics.

Quantitative plant biology is a growing field, thanks to the substantial progress of models and artificial intelligence dealing with big data. However, collecting large enough datasets is not always straightforward. The citizen science approach can multiply the workforce, hence helping the researchers with data collection and analysis, while also facilitating the spread of scientific knowledge and methods to volunteers. The reciprocal benefits go far beyond the project community: By empowering volunteers and increasing the robustness of scientific results, the scientific method spreads to the socio-ecological scale. This review aims to demonstrate that citizen science has a huge potential (i) for science with the development of different tools to collect and analyse much larger datasets, (ii) for volunteers by increasing their involvement in the project governance and (iii) for the socio-ecological system by increasing the share of the knowledge, thanks to a cascade effect and the help of ‘facilitators’.

This comment concurs with Skarbek's paper that much more room should be made for qualitative evidence in economics. However, it raises questions about the modalities through which case studies could carry general lessons when it comes to broad institutional issues. It also suggests the need to extend the set of qualitative evidence beyond case studies and to complement them with formal approaches as well as with quantitative analysis. Persuading economists to open windows to alternative methods is at stake