Are itemized lists discouraged in scientific papers? From my experience in biology (by experience I mean reading other papers), it seems that there is an unspoken rule that itemized lists do not belong in the body text of a paper.

I have almost never seen a paper have a bullet point list or a numbered list which is formatted as a separate entity in the body text (although I have seen them in eg. the sidebar, or figures which essentially are a numbered list). The closest I've seen is an "in-line" numbered list:


  Our paper raises three points: (1) yada yada, (2) blah blah and (3) bip bap boop. Point (2) is particularly important, because yakkity yakkity...


Are bullet point or numbered lists, formatted similar to how StackOverflow formats them for example, discouraged in scientific publication? If so is there a reason why?
It is extremely common in my areas of computer science (TCS and machine learning) to see a paper itemize a list of contributions as a bulleted or numbered list. I use it regularly as a technique to highlight and emphasize contributions and key ideas in a way that stands out. 

So while any such answer is area specific, I'd say that in the areas of CS that I'm familiar with it is definitely not discouraged.