What is "observation"?

Solution 1:

Typically, one says that something is observed as a synonym for it being obvious or at least not something that they intend to prove. An observation isn't a result per se, but an implied result often left up to the reader.

Papers can contain a lot of observations, as long as the reviewers don't feel that this is being intellectually dishonest and skirting meaningful issues. That said, sometimes the technical issues result from the definitions themselves, and historically, many 'real results' have been made 'observations' by a better use of definitions, and sometimes this is exactly the point.

When doing mathematics research, I've found that discovering the definitions or frameworks that make the results somewhat "too easy" is really the crux of the issue and this is often the place where real progress is made.