AHEM speaking as a grad student from the University of Wisconsin, NONE OF THE PEOPLE THERE BELIEVE IT EITHER, PLEASE DO NOT BLAME BARRY FUCKING POWELL ON US.
also he isn’t even at the uw anymore, he retired early to write really bad poetry and live in a yurt, and I swear to god I wish I were making this up
anyway next time I joke about jargon in academia I’m going to dig up some of the articles I had to read for that class in museum theater I took. it was about half theater PhD students and ended up being like something out of a comedy routine about useless academics. We spent a good 40 minutes once discussing whether or not there was such a thing as objective reality, and that was one of the more topical days.
My brother saved this document and everytime he gets angry at our neighbours for being loud he prints it to their wireless printer and you can hear the wife shout “Why the fuck would you print this AGAIN?!” to her son.
every time we serve chicken at work i think of this post
1. If you were wondering, you can type the numbers in the works cited into google and they appear to be medical journal articles about using medical imaging to detect and diagnose a rare form of Gastritis.
2. Please enjoy the offical powerpoint presentation of this paper at an academic conference by the original author, complete with Q&A:
THIS IS GOLD
oh m god please watch the video it’s some of the most contagious laughter on the planet
When I saw this cross my dash tonight, I smiled and thought “yess, the chicken chicken chicken post, I get to reblog it again and inflict it on all of the people that have followed me since last time”, and then I scrolled down more and to my utter delight there was A VIDEO, needless to say my night has been made
In case anyone is still somehow confused, the POINT of that post wasn’t “Hi, I’ve never heard of the idea of latin terminology in science, please won’t a perfect stranger explain wasps to me :)))” the POINT was “academic language is often so hyper-specific as to make entire texts inaccessible to readers in other areas of study, even related ones, and most academics are so utterly siloed that they rarely include glossaries or make an effort to integrate more explanation of terms into their work. This includes work that is ostensibly meant for a wider, less academic audience, such as online insect ID guides, to the detriment of the field at large. This disinterest in more broadly accessible communication comes at the expense of effective public outreach, contributing to the distance at which even interested laypeople are held at in modern academia. An emphasis on clear communication and integrating the public into scientific communities has been pioneered in recent decades by many excellent citizen science initiatives, but we clearly still have a long way to go.”
but for SOME REASON I thought at least essential point was implicit, and that making a bit of a self-deprecating joke with a particularly dense bit of species description was more appropriate for this particular forum than a screed on the importance of public outreach. Clearly I overestimated tumblr.
In honor of the 1st week of school, here’s good vibes for all the scholars out there. May the universe grant you the kindness of a timely gentian to impress your peers, & may you have the self-confidence to share the joy of your research with others.
Before we begin, I’ll have to state my heartfelt belief that there isn’t such a thing as useless research. Sating our human curiosity is a perfectly good reason for conducting experiments and doing science; wanting to know more is part of what makes us human, afterall. Your research does not need to be immediately useful to be valuable.
But goddamn if some of that research isn’t just straight up funny as fuck.
Michael J. Donahoo of Baylor University, Gary N. Boone of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Tucker Balch of the Carnegie Mellon University. This is one of those papers which scratches an itch of curiosity you wouldn’t even know you had until reading it, but the fact that this is published as a professionally-worded scientific paper pushes it from “mildly interesting” to “crying laughing” levels of hilarity.
So, without further ado, let’s open this baby and dig in.
The title of this marvelous publication is already a gift in and of itself. Behold:
Oh boy.
Basically what is happening here is that they’re testing if the Coriolis effect produced by the Earth’s rotation has an effect on the midair rotation of cats. Even more briefly, the subject of this research is to see if cats rotate in different directions when dropped on different hemispheres of Earth.
Fuck yeah, science.
The authors, apparently, didn’t share my belief that no research is useless, because they felt the need to actually give a reason as to why this knowledge is immediately practical to the human race, beyond providing insight into feline physiology. Namely:
Imagine being lost in some remote part of the world, and having no idea even which hemisphere you’re on. The solution? Why, catch a cat and fucking drop it, of course! Though chasing after a cat to drop in the middle of bumfuck nowhere is probably an excellent way to get even more lost, but I digress. This is the peak of human comedy, guys. Everybody go home. We had a good run but nothing and nobody is ever going to top this.
So, now that we’re done with the first paragraph, let’s get to the actual meat of the article. Starting with the wonderful diagrams such as this one:
Looking at that silhouette I cannot shake the feeling that that’s Sylvester the Cat.
And of course, the organically home-grown Scientist Snark™:
Translation: “You’re dumber than a cat, Frank.”
“We don’t fucking throw the cats, but only because it would distort the experimental data. Yeah, that’s good. Write that down Frank.”
You know, “it would be horribly cruel and unethical” is a pretty good justification for not launching cats out of a goddamn cannon. You made the right choice here, guys.
And finally, after arduous experimenting, we get the fruit of the authors’ labors, namely this results table:
Behold: science.
I have a hunch that the high amount of disqualifications probably results from the pissed off test subjects clawing the shit out of our intrepid researchers. I know Iwould be angry as hell if some big lug in a labcoat picked me up, held me upside down and dropped me many times. I’d give that guy what for, that’s for sure.
And now, for the results!
Translation:
“MOTHER FUCKER IT CLAWED ME SO BAD”
“Well maybe you shouldn’t have turned it upside down, Frank. Cats don’t like that very much.”
I CALLED IT. In this case, “disqualification” is most likely science terminology for “fucking with cats is a bad idea”.
Translation: “None of our friends on the southern hemisphere believed we were serious when we told them they’d have to turn cats upside down and drop them like the beat.”
Explaining this to your colleagues must have been a wild ride. I wish I was there to see that.
Well out of the thirty experiments you had done, 27 were invalid, and none were conducted on the southern hemisphere, but sure, let’s go with that.
And finally, for the conclusions derived from this groundbreaking experiment:
Yay…?
That is NOT a sentence I ever expected to read in a scientific paper.
Okay, okay. Up to this point I was reading this paper in complete uncertainty whether you guys were just taking the piss, but now you left no doubts. Just how fucking bored were you?!
MOVE OVER SELF-DRIVING CARS, SELF-DRIVING CATS IS WHERE IT’S AT
THE FUTURE IS NOW FUCKERS
FFFFFFfhhhucking hell, people. Reading this paper was… an experience. I’ll make sure to travel to Stockholm next year when these serious and professional gentlemen inevitably win the Nobel Prize in Medicine. I can’t wait to hear their acceptance speech, I’m sure it will be enlightening.
Moral of the story: don’t believe stupid movies that portray scientists as emotionless human robots scribbling away on their clipboards. They are equally bored as you, with the difference that they have the proper methodology to make their shitposting objectively correct. I mean, tell me this isn’t the most perfect meme format you have ever laid eyes upon.
You could tell me that, but I know you’d be lying.
Look I think Alexander Stewart’s death at Flodden was a minor tragedy too, especially on the cultural front, but palaeographers have the strangest priorities
I’ve mentioned my favorite art history professor to @systlin a few times, but there’s one story of him that stays with me. So for you, Plant Aunt, I’ve crafted a tale of one immortal spitefully making sure another immortal finally gets his:
The running joke among David’s students is that our beloved professor is clearly an immortal. How else could we explain his small office crammed with illuminated manuscripts, Scythian and Mongolian bows, 3rd cent. Roman gladii, near-Eastern rugs and ancient swords? The way he sighed wistfully in class and told us how beautiful the Parthenon was when it was new and, “not just a damn tourist attraction”? It wasn’t uncommon for us to see him hefting a sword over his shoulder, leather trench coat flapping in the wind, flipping off the head of security who really should have stopped trying by now.
It was also a running joke that our favorite immortal just did not get technology. I worked at our Help Desk for all four years of college, and David would always request one of his students to come and fix his computer.
“This computer isn’t fast enough,” he told me once, polishing an enameled chalice. Google maps was still loading on the page, trying to parse the coordinates he entered. It was likely looking ten centuries too late. “It needs more of that RAM. Really. I could be soaring over ancient Rome like a bird!”
After repeat requests, he got a brand-new Macbook Pro, which he promptly abandoned for his antique slide projector.
“I just don’t get the new technology,” he shrugged. “You can’t get the feel of things.”
That was the only sentiment he shared with his nemesis.
A Pretty Taste for Paradox 