One the least enjoyable parts of writing an academic paper is composing the abstract. It is always a struggle to boil down your complex and nuanced research to just 150 words. This is why I was delighted by a paper titled “Do Large (Magnitude ≥8) Global Earthquakes Occur on Preferred Days of the Calendar Year or Lunar Cycle?”
The abstract simply reads:
No.
[Hat tip to BoingBoing]
peakmemory 
On the other end of the spectrum: I’ve seen 600-, 800-, even 1000-word “abstracts” for certain law review articles.
Legalese is what I call it. The inability of lawyers to be succinct.