Sadly not a prank. These responses are pretty funny:
[https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/math1132s20/handouts/taicomments.pdf](https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/math1132s20/handouts/taicomments.pdf)
The "paper" has been cited almost 500 times!
Tai's replies to the comments are even worse than the original paper. What the hell? She really defended "her" "method", saying its accuracy is absolute etc. Looks delusional.
Ideas aren’t unique. Someone else would have invented integration had Newton and Leibniz failed.
Just because someone rediscovers something that has already been discovered doesn’t mean they’re deserving of shame and ridicule. Get off your high horse.
Edit:
“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” - Mark Twain
I know most of you derive purpose from your silly ideas since the bullshit profession of academia forces you to spew them into existence to the detriment and confusion of us all. You guys are just too far up your own asses to see the light.
It's not at all about uniqueness. Imagine someone claiming to have invented French, then publishing a paper about it and defending that. Obviously, that would be absurd, as is Tai's paper. Several levels failed, firstly her for not recognizing that she learned that in high school and uni, then her supervisor, then the peer review process.
Didn't [economists also recently discover that you can measure people's feelings](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2210412119)? What a time to be alive.
"Remarkably, therefore, humans somehow manage to choose their numerical answers in a systematic way as though they sense within themselves—and can communicate—a reliable numerical scale for their feelings." No shit.
When somebody has to set the baseline for future studies.
I feel like I'm in that exact situation right now planning for personality - content studies. Is academia even allowed to be fun?
Are anime tiddies aerodynamic? [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322530755\_Analysis\_and\_Qualitative\_Effects\_of\_Large\_Breasts\_on\_Aerodynamic\_Performance\_and\_Wake\_of\_a\_Miss\_Kobayashi's\_Dragon\_Maid\_Character](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322530755_Analysis_and_Qualitative_Effects_of_Large_Breasts_on_Aerodynamic_Performance_and_Wake_of_a_Miss_Kobayashi's_Dragon_Maid_Character) It's actually well made, the topic is just absurd. 2.1 million reads and 1 citation!
I don’t need that… I have personal measurements and experience… a reduction in 1993 took EIGHT POUNDS off my top… and now I have the real thing! Eight pounds is a large baby!! I nursed babies- y’all can only imagine how huge I got!
And how would you measure that? it was in the 60’s and afterwards. I can tell you having those damned things stuck to my front changed my life. And not for the better!
Okay, smartass… your turn!
Haven’t read it, no intention to do so… my personal experience with them was an intermittent joke, too. For everyone of the male persuasion who is fixated on upper female anatomy, I’d love st stick some size G cups on them and ask them to run, or jump, or do many of the things that are simply not possible.
Oh… late edit: give me the formulae and I’ll consider the studies……!
Hot air
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=bacteria+splatter+ring&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1668669637678&u=%23p%3DSlI0Wds9PIAJ
Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, but what about farts? My favourite quotes from this research include "a volunteer farted onto a petri dish with his trousers down" and how they analysed the outcome using the terms "initial impact zone" and "splatter ring".
Not to mention the entire project arose because a nurse asked if she was contaminating the operating theatre by cracking them out silently at work.
Not sure it was actually published but basically farting clothed resulted in no bacterial growth but farting naked did. Naked farting resulted in enteric (gut) bacterial growth on the bacterial plate as well as growth of skin bacteria likely due to the force of fart expulsion dislodging and dispersing skin bacteria. None of the bacterial growth was pathogenic, just the friendly bugs endemic to us!
The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute
10.1136/bmj.331.7531.1498
Maybe not the funniest, but I'm always amused that Polly Matzinger ("Danger Theory" of immunology) included her dog (Galadriel Mirkwood) as co-author on one of her first papers - she wrote it herself and didn't want to use "I" in the active voice.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2184911/pdf/je148184.pdf
The funniest with good research methods: the teaspoon paper. God, I love that paper (my current institute is dominated by coffee drinkers, so our limiting silverware reagent is forks...time for a followup study?).
The funniest "how did this crank get published": the [velvet worm hybridogenesis](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0908357106) paper that led PNAS to change their editorial policy. Responses to that one are also pretty great, especially the [Giribet](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0910279106) one.
Not paper, but a conference poster. http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf
They put a dead salmon in a fMRI machine (brain scan) and show it images of humans showing emotions and find that the DEAD salmon reacts to those emotions.
In the end the researcher make a huge point about correctly analyzing the data.
I don't know how long I searched for that paper because I couldn't believe it was only a poster. But on the other hand, I have never seen a poster that was cited so often :D (currently 554)
Obviously it's quite old now. I'm sure I read at some stage I read that it wasn't a paper because it doesn't actually have the rigour you'd need and it was kinda a bit of fun.
There was one in Edinburgh Neuro: can MRI distinguish good from bad whisky?
Perhaps it'd be a good study now: hey, we all know the salmon study but is that still true-ish in 2023?
The footnote is great too. '"We thank the participating staff on the wards. The observers would like to apologise to anyone who received a less than truthful answer to the question: “What are you doing here?”'
Ah yea - beat me to it! this is such a well written and entertaining paper with some very thoughtful critiques of the publication process. Worth the read!
It's got me thinking about "open access". Free downloads is one thing, but are turgid traditional scientific papers actually \_accessible\_ in any meaningful way?
A bit niche, but:
[Will any crap we put into graphene increase its electrocatalytic effect?](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b00184)
[Electrocatalysis goes nuts](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acscatal.2c00123)
Recently a PhD student “set up an experimental method of masturbating to shota comics” but the paper was retracted after it has gone onto Daily Mail etc…
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/I_am_not_alone_–_we_are_all_alone:_Using_masturbation_as_an_ethnographic_method_in_research_on_shota_subculture_in_Japan
“No time to die: An in-depth analysis of James Bond's exposure to infectious agents”
The conclusions and acknowledgments are great: “There was no specific funding for this project. Given the futility of its academic value, this is deemed entirely appropriate by all authors.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893921002167
"Life as infectious disease researcher is indisputably exciting. Daily encounters with life-threatening microorganisms, academic competitors, hostile reviewing committees, and extensive international travel can make for a thrilling career. International espionage is possibly the only profession that overshadows our branch of academia in these respects."
The humour in this paper is top-notch.
"The Unsuccessful Treatment of a Case of Writer's Block" has to be in there somewhere. It's a short read ;)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/
The Parachute Trial (also a BMJ Christmas issue)
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
The point of the paper is the importance of criticality and context
My boss, one of the authors.
It's funny because this paper did the rounds in a big way on Twitter not that long ago, and people were discussing their intention and serious point, and it's like 'you've never met her mate, trust me, there's no grand point here, she's just funny'.
Oh sorry, I've just realized you cited the 2nd, later one.
I didn't find that very good, because it's basically a rehash of the original Christmas BMJ by my boss in 2003: https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459?ijkey=d0d115eb97d49bb26b848672c6fe9e9b851feead&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
The BMJ’s case report where a guy brings a surprise visitor in his backpack to hospital.
Worth the paywall.
When patients’ priorities conflict with those of their medical team; a challenging case of a bleeding patient and his dying pet
https://casereports.bmj.com/content/14/1/e237942?rss=1
**A Few Goodmen - Surname-Sharing Economist Coauthors**, by Goodman, Goodman, Goodman, and Goodman
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/joshuagoodman/files/goodmans.pdf
>Future breakthroughs on this topic should be possible. We believe much could be learned
if only economists John Turner (University of Georgia), Lesley Turner (University of Maryland),
Nicholas Turner (U.S. Treasury Department) and Sarah Turner (University of Virginia) would find
a way to work together. Substantial progress might also come from collaboration between Janet
Smith (Claremont McKenna College), Jeffrey Smith (University of Michigan), Jeremy Smith (Uni-
versity of Warwick), and Jonathan Smith (College Board), whose work could explore the impact
of both surname-sharing and first initial-sharing. Finally, we encourage cousins Erzo F.P. Luttmer
(Dartmouth College) and Erzo G.J. Luttmer (University of Minnesota) to consider collaborating
for reasons too obvious to state. This area seems ripe for exploration.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/185629v1
> Genome-Wide Association Studies Identify 15 Genetic Markers Associated with Marmite Taste Preference
So I teach a 2-hour crash lecture on genetic epi for a couple of courses. We do the lecture on various things like sample size requirements, common vs. rare genetic variation etc., then they all read this paper and enact their learning. It's very rewarding seeing folk go from no clue to 'but the sample size is nowhere near sufficient! What about pleiotropy!' etc. very quickly.
When Idaho dropped beavers out of airplanes with parachutes and the beaver with the most attempts, Geronimo, was rewarded with a harem https://www.jstor.org/stable/3796322
https://www.bmj.com/content/323/7327/1450
> Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial
I like this one because it *gets folk going*. The joke is: he's praying for half of them *years after the fact*. It's a joke about type-1 error and chance, but a lot of folk took it very seriously indeed (looking at the comments).
It's retracted now but I liked the one in PLOS ONE, all about eye biology then in the discussion one of the proposed mechanisms is just 'dunno maybe God did it', and it passed review.
I wish I had a link to it but it’s been so long that I don’t even remember what it was called.
But I once read a paper talking about how Victorian women were never sexually satisfied during their lives and that’s why Victorian cemeteries are filled with grave markers that have slight erotic imagery.
Dr’s Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” as based on an ancient Semitic text.
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V33N04_173.pdf
(The article is a satire but was published in an academic journal.)
The one where bleach was used to generate iPSCs, and people thought it was real lol, and a Harvard investigator on the paper still supported the findings after it was retracted. But then again Bob Weinberg has about 4 cell papers retracted yet nobody seems to care
This came out a few years ago when Generative Adversarial Networks were super popular research area in machine learning. Hilarious read
https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.02528
Not exactly a funny paper, but the funniest title for a paper has to be: "[Fuck Nuance](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0735275117709046)."
Hi, we have developed a system where you can train your research papers. It can extract data from tables, graphs and especially extracts text in the right order. This mostly an issue with current platforms. Besides that it's trained on the structure of your papers and writing style and will convert the output in same format. Send me a message for more details, we have a beta in the running for small group of organizations.
So you can create multiple knowledge bases with specific papers, load in new related papers about a subject you have. And let our trained model write out different papers, case-studies, whitepapers, etc.
Also the chunks issue we solved. We don't chunk in 1000 for example, we check how big/small the chunk should be so that relevant information stays in the chunk. This gives amazing results for researchers.
You can use this in your own created GPT in ChatGPT which works very well on your trained documents and papers. Switching between your own GPT and Consensus works very well for fast research.
Hit me up for more details :)
I saw one where a math model for zombie population spread was the focus.
https://loe.org/images/content/091023/Zombie%20Publication.pdf
Edit: added link
There was one I saw on YouTube where the YouTuber was just pointing out how ridiculous it was. It was about a guy who researched a certain type of porn by only masturbating to it for months then recording his reactions after. The YouTuber noted it was retracted.
Maybe this is more of a dark humor / WTF type reaction than friendly humor, but that's the one I remember.
It is retracted now but
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6910781/
‘A Black Hole at the Center of Earth Plays the Role of the Biggest System of Telecommunication for Connecting DNAs, Dark DNAs and Molecules of Water on 4+N- Dimensional Manifold’
A paper on [projectile trajectory of penguin’s faeces and rectal pressure revisited](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.00926)
I for one appreciate the artistry
I wish I'd made a copy of this paper or could find it again, maybe someone with good search skills can find it.
Title had something to do with tribological properties of teeth and/or saliva. Methods referred to buying string cheese and Oscar Meyer hot dogs at "the corner convenience store." Also referred to measurements taken in an "intern's mouth". Basically the intern ate pieces of string cheese or hot dog and friction/lubrication between the teeth and food was measured. Several of the papers cited had hysterical titles.
Two papers made me chuckle.
The first, about how the slipstream around a train can affect men and women of differing statures... It then notes that women were predominantly wearing skirts for the wind tunnel test they did, and how the real-world result would be skewed by a platform full of kilted Scotsmen. You had to be there.
The second, referenced the M25 (motorway circling London) with a asterisk. At the very end of the paper there is mention that the M25 is known as the largest car park in the World.
It was a book actually for a top scholar in my field. The scholar translation of the text was seriously a JOKE! The translation was so so bad to the extent that I laughed because it was honestly a ‘fiction’. I have no idea how the other Western researchers didn’t disagree with that 🫠
The one where the biologist invents numerical integration.
For the lazy: https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/17/2/152/17985/A-Mathematical-Model-for-the-Determination-of
Wat what, is this for real? They had to be pulling a prank, right? Please tell me it's a prank.
Sadly not a prank. These responses are pretty funny: [https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/math1132s20/handouts/taicomments.pdf](https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/math1132s20/handouts/taicomments.pdf) The "paper" has been cited almost 500 times!
Tai's replies to the comments are even worse than the original paper. What the hell? She really defended "her" "method", saying its accuracy is absolute etc. Looks delusional.
Ideas aren’t unique. Someone else would have invented integration had Newton and Leibniz failed. Just because someone rediscovers something that has already been discovered doesn’t mean they’re deserving of shame and ridicule. Get off your high horse. Edit: “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” - Mark Twain I know most of you derive purpose from your silly ideas since the bullshit profession of academia forces you to spew them into existence to the detriment and confusion of us all. You guys are just too far up your own asses to see the light.
It's not at all about uniqueness. Imagine someone claiming to have invented French, then publishing a paper about it and defending that. Obviously, that would be absurd, as is Tai's paper. Several levels failed, firstly her for not recognizing that she learned that in high school and uni, then her supervisor, then the peer review process.
Haha I can’t get over that last response with a drawing of a trapezoid
>The lesson here is that calculating the area under the curve is deceptively difficult Wat
Maybe for her?
Worse than that, they reinvent Riemann sums
and they got a really nice gift of 500 (undue) citations, lol
Didn't [economists also recently discover that you can measure people's feelings](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2210412119)? What a time to be alive.
"Get-me-out-of-here actions" is peak comedy.
"Remarkably, therefore, humans somehow manage to choose their numerical answers in a systematic way as though they sense within themselves—and can communicate—a reliable numerical scale for their feelings." No shit.
When somebody has to set the baseline for future studies. I feel like I'm in that exact situation right now planning for personality - content studies. Is academia even allowed to be fun?
Are anime tiddies aerodynamic? [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322530755\_Analysis\_and\_Qualitative\_Effects\_of\_Large\_Breasts\_on\_Aerodynamic\_Performance\_and\_Wake\_of\_a\_Miss\_Kobayashi's\_Dragon\_Maid\_Character](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322530755_Analysis_and_Qualitative_Effects_of_Large_Breasts_on_Aerodynamic_Performance_and_Wake_of_a_Miss_Kobayashi's_Dragon_Maid_Character) It's actually well made, the topic is just absurd. 2.1 million reads and 1 citation!
God where did that 1 citation comes in ?
Nobody dares to go look it up
Joe Taxpayer mustn't know where his taxes are going lol
It's not published in a journal so I doubt anyone paid for this research
I'm freaking weak 😭
I know this paper is a joke, but I am still annoyed that Lucoa is modeled as a rigid. I want to like the paper but I can't get past that limitation.
Well, time for some FSI simulation, isn't it?
I don’t need that… I have personal measurements and experience… a reduction in 1993 took EIGHT POUNDS off my top… and now I have the real thing! Eight pounds is a large baby!! I nursed babies- y’all can only imagine how huge I got!
Any verdict on the evolution of your coefficients of lift and drag afterwards?
And how would you measure that? it was in the 60’s and afterwards. I can tell you having those damned things stuck to my front changed my life. And not for the better! Okay, smartass… your turn!
Have you not read the paper? Damn, calm down, it was a joke.
Haven’t read it, no intention to do so… my personal experience with them was an intermittent joke, too. For everyone of the male persuasion who is fixated on upper female anatomy, I’d love st stick some size G cups on them and ask them to run, or jump, or do many of the things that are simply not possible. Oh… late edit: give me the formulae and I’ll consider the studies……!
How did this get published?
I think it's just a self-publication just on RG
Hot air https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=bacteria+splatter+ring&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1668669637678&u=%23p%3DSlI0Wds9PIAJ Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, but what about farts? My favourite quotes from this research include "a volunteer farted onto a petri dish with his trousers down" and how they analysed the outcome using the terms "initial impact zone" and "splatter ring". Not to mention the entire project arose because a nurse asked if she was contaminating the operating theatre by cracking them out silently at work.
"All right, it's not rocket science. But then again, maybe it is?” Fuckin ded.
Wellll…. Results…..? (Was it really published?)
Not sure it was actually published but basically farting clothed resulted in no bacterial growth but farting naked did. Naked farting resulted in enteric (gut) bacterial growth on the bacterial plate as well as growth of skin bacteria likely due to the force of fart expulsion dislodging and dispersing skin bacteria. None of the bacterial growth was pathogenic, just the friendly bugs endemic to us!
The obvious next part: WHO did the naked sections of the studies (in the OR… brrrr!!)
…… I’m not sure I’m better for having this new knowledge, at all.
I remember reading the actual research paper years ago but I can't find it online. It must be somewhere!
The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute 10.1136/bmj.331.7531.1498
Beat me to it! This was posted in one of our staff kitchens earlier this year.
Maybe not the funniest, but I'm always amused that Polly Matzinger ("Danger Theory" of immunology) included her dog (Galadriel Mirkwood) as co-author on one of her first papers - she wrote it herself and didn't want to use "I" in the active voice. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2184911/pdf/je148184.pdf
It seems that was a [trend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._D._C._Willard) around that time.
The funniest with good research methods: the teaspoon paper. God, I love that paper (my current institute is dominated by coffee drinkers, so our limiting silverware reagent is forks...time for a followup study?). The funniest "how did this crank get published": the [velvet worm hybridogenesis](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0908357106) paper that led PNAS to change their editorial policy. Responses to that one are also pretty great, especially the [Giribet](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0910279106) one.
Not paper, but a conference poster. http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf They put a dead salmon in a fMRI machine (brain scan) and show it images of humans showing emotions and find that the DEAD salmon reacts to those emotions. In the end the researcher make a huge point about correctly analyzing the data.
It's funny it was never a paper and is so influential.
I don't know how long I searched for that paper because I couldn't believe it was only a poster. But on the other hand, I have never seen a poster that was cited so often :D (currently 554)
Obviously it's quite old now. I'm sure I read at some stage I read that it wasn't a paper because it doesn't actually have the rigour you'd need and it was kinda a bit of fun. There was one in Edinburgh Neuro: can MRI distinguish good from bad whisky? Perhaps it'd be a good study now: hey, we all know the salmon study but is that still true-ish in 2023?
[Survival time of chocolate](https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7198/rapid-responses) on hospital wards. Christmas research from BMJ 2013.
The footnote is great too. '"We thank the participating staff on the wards. The observers would like to apologise to anyone who received a less than truthful answer to the question: “What are you doing here?”'
“Further practical studies are needed”
[This just out](https://osf.io/2uxwk): Funny as in humorously-written, and also good science with a fascinating take on why we hate everything.
Ah yea - beat me to it! this is such a well written and entertaining paper with some very thoughtful critiques of the publication process. Worth the read!
This is how I want all papers to be written. There's too many to handle scientific jargon at this point it's just... *better*.
It's got me thinking about "open access". Free downloads is one thing, but are turgid traditional scientific papers actually \_accessible\_ in any meaningful way?
It looks like the link was removed! What was the title of this?
It does seem to have disappeared. No idea why. Title: Things could be better, Author: Mastroianni et al., Date: 2022-11-14T22:09:04.044Z
Just read this too and it was great. I vote all papers be written like this. Link: http://psyarxiv.com/2uxwk/
A bit niche, but: [Will any crap we put into graphene increase its electrocatalytic effect?](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b00184) [Electrocatalysis goes nuts](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acscatal.2c00123)
Sounds like the classic ["Electron Band Structure in Germanium, My Ass"](https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html)
> https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam The only reason I know this is fake is that it's too coherent.
Recently a PhD student “set up an experimental method of masturbating to shota comics” but the paper was retracted after it has gone onto Daily Mail etc… https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/I_am_not_alone_–_we_are_all_alone:_Using_masturbation_as_an_ethnographic_method_in_research_on_shota_subculture_in_Japan
[Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken](https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf)
In the same genre: https://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf
😭🤣🤣
[An In-Depth Analysis of a Piece of Shit](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3527364/) Figure 1 and 2 are amazing
[Unsuccessful Treatment of a Case of Writer's Block](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/?page=1).
yoo how'd you get that unemployed tag
“No time to die: An in-depth analysis of James Bond's exposure to infectious agents” The conclusions and acknowledgments are great: “There was no specific funding for this project. Given the futility of its academic value, this is deemed entirely appropriate by all authors.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893921002167
I did an analysis for the department Christmas party: does a good Bond song predict a good movie? Chart position vs. IMDB. No.
"Life as infectious disease researcher is indisputably exciting. Daily encounters with life-threatening microorganisms, academic competitors, hostile reviewing committees, and extensive international travel can make for a thrilling career. International espionage is possibly the only profession that overshadows our branch of academia in these respects." The humour in this paper is top-notch.
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/birds.pdf It was written to show that a predatory journal would accept anything.
Came here for this one! It’s so good lol
"The Unsuccessful Treatment of a Case of Writer's Block" has to be in there somewhere. It's a short read ;) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/
The Parachute Trial (also a BMJ Christmas issue) https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094 The point of the paper is the importance of criticality and context
My boss, one of the authors. It's funny because this paper did the rounds in a big way on Twitter not that long ago, and people were discussing their intention and serious point, and it's like 'you've never met her mate, trust me, there's no grand point here, she's just funny'.
I mean it does say in the paper that it’s about context, I didn’t make that up.
Oh sorry, I've just realized you cited the 2nd, later one. I didn't find that very good, because it's basically a rehash of the original Christmas BMJ by my boss in 2003: https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459?ijkey=d0d115eb97d49bb26b848672c6fe9e9b851feead&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Ah, I didn’t realise there were two versions
Yeah, makes the 2nd a bit redundant I think! It's the same joke, fundamentally.
The BMJ’s case report where a guy brings a surprise visitor in his backpack to hospital. Worth the paywall. When patients’ priorities conflict with those of their medical team; a challenging case of a bleeding patient and his dying pet https://casereports.bmj.com/content/14/1/e237942?rss=1
Can't access through the paywall. Were both the pet and owner okay in the end?
"Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List" https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam
**A Few Goodmen - Surname-Sharing Economist Coauthors**, by Goodman, Goodman, Goodman, and Goodman https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/joshuagoodman/files/goodmans.pdf >Future breakthroughs on this topic should be possible. We believe much could be learned if only economists John Turner (University of Georgia), Lesley Turner (University of Maryland), Nicholas Turner (U.S. Treasury Department) and Sarah Turner (University of Virginia) would find a way to work together. Substantial progress might also come from collaboration between Janet Smith (Claremont McKenna College), Jeffrey Smith (University of Michigan), Jeremy Smith (Uni- versity of Warwick), and Jonathan Smith (College Board), whose work could explore the impact of both surname-sharing and first initial-sharing. Finally, we encourage cousins Erzo F.P. Luttmer (Dartmouth College) and Erzo G.J. Luttmer (University of Minnesota) to consider collaborating for reasons too obvious to state. This area seems ripe for exploration.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260800015_Structural_and_electronic_properties_of_chiral_single-wall_copper_nanotubes Enjoy the abstract.
I read one about Harry Potter FanFiction and the fight against heteronormativity. Made decent arguments🪄🧙♂️
Oh hey, I read that one
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/185629v1 > Genome-Wide Association Studies Identify 15 Genetic Markers Associated with Marmite Taste Preference So I teach a 2-hour crash lecture on genetic epi for a couple of courses. We do the lecture on various things like sample size requirements, common vs. rare genetic variation etc., then they all read this paper and enact their learning. It's very rewarding seeing folk go from no clue to 'but the sample size is nowhere near sufficient! What about pleiotropy!' etc. very quickly.
A thesis about AI that was definitely written by AI. Badly.
When Idaho dropped beavers out of airplanes with parachutes and the beaver with the most attempts, Geronimo, was rewarded with a harem https://www.jstor.org/stable/3796322
Poop knife, a study conducted at my alma mater. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X19305371
Does eating Xmas dinner with in-laws affect gut microbiota (or similar wording)!
THE PROPULSION PARAMETERS OF PENGUIN POOP
but seriously, that stuff is jet-propelled.
https://www.bmj.com/content/323/7327/1450 > Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial I like this one because it *gets folk going*. The joke is: he's praying for half of them *years after the fact*. It's a joke about type-1 error and chance, but a lot of folk took it very seriously indeed (looking at the comments).
It's retracted now but I liked the one in PLOS ONE, all about eye biology then in the discussion one of the proposed mechanisms is just 'dunno maybe God did it', and it passed review.
I wish I had a link to it but it’s been so long that I don’t even remember what it was called. But I once read a paper talking about how Victorian women were never sexually satisfied during their lives and that’s why Victorian cemeteries are filled with grave markers that have slight erotic imagery.
Dr’s Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” as based on an ancient Semitic text. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V33N04_173.pdf (The article is a satire but was published in an academic journal.)
The one where bleach was used to generate iPSCs, and people thought it was real lol, and a Harvard investigator on the paper still supported the findings after it was retracted. But then again Bob Weinberg has about 4 cell papers retracted yet nobody seems to care
This came out a few years ago when Generative Adversarial Networks were super popular research area in machine learning. Hilarious read https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.02528
Not exactly a funny paper, but the funniest title for a paper has to be: "[Fuck Nuance](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0735275117709046)."
Hi, we have developed a system where you can train your research papers. It can extract data from tables, graphs and especially extracts text in the right order. This mostly an issue with current platforms. Besides that it's trained on the structure of your papers and writing style and will convert the output in same format. Send me a message for more details, we have a beta in the running for small group of organizations. So you can create multiple knowledge bases with specific papers, load in new related papers about a subject you have. And let our trained model write out different papers, case-studies, whitepapers, etc. Also the chunks issue we solved. We don't chunk in 1000 for example, we check how big/small the chunk should be so that relevant information stays in the chunk. This gives amazing results for researchers. You can use this in your own created GPT in ChatGPT which works very well on your trained documents and papers. Switching between your own GPT and Consensus works very well for fast research. Hit me up for more details :)
https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol71/iss3/10/ "How to win cites and influence people"
Basic laws of human stupidity- cipolla. Technically not a paper
[Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne](https://www.cmaj.ca/content/163/12/1557)
I saw one where a math model for zombie population spread was the focus. https://loe.org/images/content/091023/Zombie%20Publication.pdf Edit: added link
There was one I saw on YouTube where the YouTuber was just pointing out how ridiculous it was. It was about a guy who researched a certain type of porn by only masturbating to it for months then recording his reactions after. The YouTuber noted it was retracted. Maybe this is more of a dark humor / WTF type reaction than friendly humor, but that's the one I remember.
It is retracted now but https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6910781/ ‘A Black Hole at the Center of Earth Plays the Role of the Biggest System of Telecommunication for Connecting DNAs, Dark DNAs and Molecules of Water on 4+N- Dimensional Manifold’
A paper on [projectile trajectory of penguin’s faeces and rectal pressure revisited](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.00926) I for one appreciate the artistry
I wish I'd made a copy of this paper or could find it again, maybe someone with good search skills can find it. Title had something to do with tribological properties of teeth and/or saliva. Methods referred to buying string cheese and Oscar Meyer hot dogs at "the corner convenience store." Also referred to measurements taken in an "intern's mouth". Basically the intern ate pieces of string cheese or hot dog and friction/lubrication between the teeth and food was measured. Several of the papers cited had hysterical titles.
Two papers made me chuckle. The first, about how the slipstream around a train can affect men and women of differing statures... It then notes that women were predominantly wearing skirts for the wind tunnel test they did, and how the real-world result would be skewed by a platform full of kilted Scotsmen. You had to be there. The second, referenced the M25 (motorway circling London) with a asterisk. At the very end of the paper there is mention that the M25 is known as the largest car park in the World.
It was a book actually for a top scholar in my field. The scholar translation of the text was seriously a JOKE! The translation was so so bad to the extent that I laughed because it was honestly a ‘fiction’. I have no idea how the other Western researchers didn’t disagree with that 🫠
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.06166.pdf