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Originally Posted by DNSB
I would have to disagree with you. If the purpose of the study was to test if there was any differences between the "narrative realism" and "science fiction", more of an effort not to introduce extraneous influences would have been made. Or are we going to pretend that terms such as corporal and ensign (and nevermind what the bleep is the lowest rank of commissioned officer (also referred to as an officer and a gentleman or an larval officer) is doing waiting on tables in a restaurant) are commonly used outside or military or military style organizations? Letter to the editor vs. message to Command? Mrs. Moyer consistently through the text vs. Engineer Grady in the first paragraph and Grady with no honorific after that? I did find that the description of using a stylus to handwrite his letter humourous. Are there no keyboards real or touch in that future?
Personally, when I read science fiction, I pay attention to the details of the world building. Oddly, most of my favoured authors have done the same. I look at the effort Hal Clement put into such an unlikely worlds as Mesklin or Iceworld as examples. Calling that patische science fiction could only be done by someone who read little science fiction and didn't much like what he/she read.
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When doing scientific research, you try to isolate what you're studying as much as possible to make the conclusions more definitive. Making the two passages as similar as possible except for the marker words is an attempt to do that. It may not produce prose that would make a best seller, but it is valid in terms of the research. There is some difference there to consider. It may not apply to iconic SF novels as read by ardent fans, but there is something going on there that needs to be analyzed.