We all know that there are animal co-authors in the scientific literature like the dog of Polly Matzinger. Here is another example, see a further nice story of Sophie Fessl …
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
23.04.2022, access 23.10.2025
Ghost authors
Category Archives: Joke
Happiness and Working Hours
A phantastic idea by Lisa deBruine – a Rosling type plots which look very much like a negative association.
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
22.04.2022, access 23.10.2025
I rearrange facts so they resemble truth more than in reality
Take care – category joke here.
This article won’t change your mind
I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘She’s totally lying.’ At the same time, I remember something in my mind saying, ‘And that doesn’t matter.’
Don’t miss Werner Herzog…
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
22.03.2022, access 23.10.2025
True scientists
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
18.03.2022, access 23.10.2025
Significant phrases to hide a non significant result
One of those papers I wish I would have had the idea ;-)
The question is how phrases expressing nonsignificant results have been reported in RCTs over the past 30 years.
incredible … and it is even tortured science to rely on p<0.05 – for a discussion see references 1, 2 and 3.
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
25.02.2022, access 23.10.2025
It’s all too much
Charles Day in Physics Today (which is already my view in biomedicine 5 years ago)
Their main conclusion is sobering: As the number of papers in a field increases, researchers find it harder to recognize innovative work. Progress seems to be slowing.
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
13.01.2022, access 23.10.2025
Der neue Forschertyp
Das LJ Editorial zitiert Charlton’s “Why modern scientists are so dull”
Auf jeder Stufe von Ausbildung und Karriere gibt es die Tendenz, wirklich schlaue und kreative Menschen auszuschließen, indem man vor allem gewissenhafte und kontaktfähige Leute vorzieht. In dem Maße, in dem Wissenschaft immer stärker durch Peer-Review-Mechanismen dominiert wird, erlangt der pro-soziale und konsensfähige Forscher immer mehr Vorrang vor dem brillanten und inspirierten – oft aber auch schroffen und rebellischen – Typ des Wahrheitssuchers, der früher unter den besten Wissenschaftlern so weit verbreitet war.
cum grano salis… denn es sind nicht vor allem die gewissenhaften sondern die gewissenlosen. .. Die Empfehlung im Original
A further vital ingredient is therefore necessary: devotion to the transcendental value of Truth. Elite revolutionary science should therefore be a place that welcomes brilliant, impulsive, inspired, antisocial oddballs – so long as they are also dedicated truth-seekers.
Yea, yea.
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
11.01.2022, access 23.10.2025
How to buy papers
It is incredible – but probably some kind of advanced fee scam only.
500€ would be clear bargain compared to the 9500€ that you have to pay here
although there is a surplus of 6000€ for the science writer at fiverr and another 50,000€ lab funding to one of the numerous “science charities” and “patient alliances”.
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
10.01.2022, access 23.10.2025
Scientific discipline controversies
Are there any? Sure, a recent Twitter thread asked for it
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12.07.2021, access 23.10.2025
Kunstfreiheit
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
13.04.2021, access 23.10.2025
Allergy research failed from the beginning
I have been asked why allergy research is so much dominated by quack research with an obsession to strange research areas like risk by use of toilet paper or protection by cow shit .
I don’t know the answer. Maybe every “researcher” can immediately get a paper published?
The field has been spoiled since I worked in this area – here is a never retracted paper on the effect of molecules in water below the Avogadro limit…
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
4.04.2021, access 23.10.2025
The data may not contain the answer
(stolen from https://twitter.com/sTeamTraen/status/1361067408660783115 )
John Tukey (1915-2000), American mathematician best known for the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm and the box plot
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
19.02.2021, access 23.10.2025
Paul Dirac and the parrot
Found at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
When Bohr bemoaned to Ernest Rutherford, “Dirac never says anything,” Rutherford replied with a story about a shop owner assuaging a dissatisfied customer who had purchased a parrot that would not speak. “Please forgive me. You wanted a parrot that talks, and I gave you the parrot that thinks.”
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
17.01.2021, access 23.10.2025
Fair enough
Wouldn’t pay 20 bucks for Mullis while 40 for Brenner is ok
My Life in Science
Sydney Brenner
BioMed Central: 2001. 191 pp. £14.99
“In April and May of 1994, Sydney Brenner sat down in front of a video camera and talked to Lewis Wolpert, recording enough to fill 15 videotapes. Errol Friedberg and Eleanor Lawrence have taken sections from the transcript of the interviews and woven them, with linking and explanatory passages added by Friedberg, into My Life in Science, an ‘autobiography’ of Brenner’s more than 50 years of research.”
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
13.01.2021, access 23.10.2025
Fallibilismus
Heute in der Corona Vorlesung der LMU / Armin Nassehi aus dem Gedächtnis zitiert, der genaue Wortlaut folgt
Häufig wurde der Wissenschaft zu Beginn der Corona Krise Unwissenheit vorgeworfen was wiederum auf Unwissenheit der anderen Seite schliessen liess
42:23 das Kompetenzproblem
CC-BY-NC Science Surf
15.12.2020, access 23.10.2025