I am not convinced that medical hnours are really doing any good (except some additional research money that may be welcome). There is a current twitter thread about the British monarchy which explains reasons to decline medical honours

Jon Snow: renowned journalist turned down an OBE Because he believed working journalists should not take honours from those they report on he said “I tried to find out why I’d been given it and was unable to get a clear answer or, indeed, to find out who had proposed me.”

or

Francis Crick: The physicist who discovered DNA, was offered a CBE in 1963 but declined, one year after they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He apparently believed the British monarchy to be “out of date”

or

L.S Lowry: He turned down knighthood and the offer of 5 British royal honours (they wouldn’t leave this nigga alone) although he said it wasn’t for political reason he wanted his life to remain unchanged and dedicated to his art.

thehindu.com/sci-tech/science reported it first that marriage proposals have been placed in the acknowledgments

One such proposal published in a 2015 paper in Current Biology reads: “C.M.B. would specifically like to highlight the ongoing and unwavering support of Lorna O’Brien. Lorna, will you marry me?”

Another postscript in Global Change Biology is more worrying

Jos Barlow, a conservation scientist from Lancaster University in the U.K. and the Federal University of Lavras in Brazil, who led the team, wrote in the acknowledgement: “Some contributors declined authorship to maintain anonymity. We regret this was necessary and thank them for their important contribution.”

Die SZ weiss die Antwort

Womöglich gedeihen Innovationen manchmal ganz im Gegenteil besonders gut, wenn ein Tier genug hat: ausreichend Zeit und Energie, um etwa mit dem Schloss einer Futterkiste herumzuspielen. Neues ausprobieren kann vor allem, wer sich nicht rund um die Uhr mit Futtersuche, Wacheschieben und Revierverteidigung aufreiben muss, sondern derartige Verpflichtungen auch mal an Artgenossen delegieren kann.

Vermutlich ist es bei den Menschen auch nicht viel anders. Wenn man sich nicht rund um die Uhr mit Futtersuche, Wacheschieben und Revierverteidigung aufreiben muss.

Using the new TdT R package, I have re done the speed plot

library(remotes)
install_github("alastairrushworth/tdf")
library(tdf)
editions %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = start_date, y = distance / time_overall, color = edition)) +
  geom_point(na.rm = TRUE,size=4) + 
  geom_label_repel(data = editions, aes(label = winner_name), size = 4, na.rm = TRUE, segment.alpha = 1, point.padding=1) + 
  xlab('year') + 
  ylab('average speed km/h') +
  ylim(23,45)

https://twitter.com/_Mountain_lover/status/857580792691740672

Occasionally a strange paper is finding its way into the medical literature. This a paper by Paolo Vercellini from Milano has been cited only 14 times

while there is a tweet by @evopsychgoogle that has been retweeted now 14.312 times. I think the question is not so much “Do mad people get endo or does endo make you mad?” but “Do endo patients have mad doctors?”

Irgendwie werden ich den Verdacht nicht los, dass wenn jemand Gehirnschmalz bei anderen fordert, ihm selbst das fehlt.

Was soll das eigentlich sein, Gehirnschmalz? Der Duden sagt umgangssprachlich, scherzhaft, Verstandeskraft.  Der DW meint:

Schmalz ist eigentlich das geschmolzene Fett von Tieren – vor allem von Schweinen oder Gänsen. Manche Menschen schmieren es sich aufs Brot oder nutzen es zum Braten. Wer von Gehirnschmalz spricht, meint nicht etwa, dass jemand nur Fett im Kopf hat. Verwendet jemand viel Gehirnschmalz auf etwas, bedeutet das: diese Person denkt intensiv über etwas nach.

Es ist also doch so wie vermutet: die Verballhornung der Gehirnleistung,  die bereits abgeschmolzen ist.