Revenge on referees
Our information colleagues Jacob Aron and Michael Le Web page have drawn Suggestions’s consideration to a publish on social media website BlueSky, which highlighted a scientific paper in awed tones.
The examine in query was lately printed within the Worldwide Journal of Hydrogen Power. There are seven authors. It’s in regards to the methods hydrogen atoms can infiltrate sure metallic alloys and make them brittle. It focuses on calculating precisely the place the hydrogen atoms place themselves within the crystal construction of the metallic, so as to perceive the mechanism of this embrittlement.
At this level, you might be questioning what this piece of analysis is doing in Suggestions. Properly, the introduction concludes with the next paragraph: “As strongly requested by the reviewers, here we cite some references [[35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47]] although they are completely irrelevant to the present work.”
For anybody who hasn’t labored in academia, the easiest way we are able to clarify that is that the authors are being gloriously petty. Their article has been examined by nameless peer reviewers, who (amongst different recommendations) have urged them to quote the 13 older research within the listing. The authors, left with no selection however to insert the supposedly irrelevant research, have refused to include them into their precise textual content, however as an alternative included them whereas concurrently drawing consideration to their irrelevance.
Or, as BlueSky person @Dave nʎ=2dsinɵ :protein: put it: “Absolute shots fired”. By the way in which, kudos to @Dave nʎ=2dsinɵ :protein: for having a username that pushed New Scientist‘s font to its limits and sent Feedback to a search engine. The little equation in the middle is, we discovered, Bragg’s regulation, which describes how crystal lattices scatter incoming waves.
Anyway, as soon as Suggestions had stopped having flashbacks to our temporary time in academia, through which this sort of factor occurred to us however we didn’t have the nerve to sit back in print, we did our due diligence and regarded up all 13 references.
All are involved with alloys and different composite supplies, however none of them appears to be about hydrogen embrittlement. Most are so technical that Suggestions was reasonably defeated in our try to completely comprehend them: any readers extra conversant in composite supplies are welcome to weigh in on the normal deal with. Nonetheless, even with our poor understanding, not one of the references appears straight related.
Nevertheless, Suggestions did discover one thing curious. Many times, the identical authors seem within the 13 research’ creator lists – and one creator was concerned in all of them.
Suggestions doesn’t wish to placed on a tinfoil hat, particularly if it has been embrittled by hydrogen. However we marvel if we would have recognized the nameless peer reviewer. Our query now’s: how did this get into print? Did the editors not discover the prank – or did they permit it for causes of their very own? Enquiring minds wish to know.
A fishy story
Talking of taking concepts from colleagues, assistant information editor Sam Wong flagged an intriguing examine in Water Sources Analysis. This journal isn’t, we confess, certainly one of Suggestions’s each day reads, however we appear to have been lacking out.
The examine is in regards to the biblical miracle of loaves and fishes, through which Jesus apparently fed 5000 individuals utilizing 5 loaves and two fish. The authors suggest a naturalistic clarification: a seiche or standing wave. The thought is that waves blowing over a lake generally create a standing wave, inflicting deep water to rise to the floor. In Lake Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee from the Bible, this deep water is low in oxygen – so if it rises to the floor, it will possibly trigger fish to asphyxiate en masse.
The authors doc two such occasions in Lake Kinneret in 2012. In addition they notice that they appear to be fairly uncommon: there hasn’t been one since 2012. Meaning most individuals could not have been conscious of the likelihood, particularly if they’d travelled to hearken to a charismatic speaker and lacked native data.
Suggestions is including this to the lengthy listing of scientific explanations for obvious supernatural occasions, just like the manna from heaven being crystallised honeydew from scale bugs and the tendency of infrasound to trigger spooky sensations that may be interpreted as hauntings. We’ve got additionally eliminated our tinfoil hat, as we fear it’d act as a conductor for a divine lightning bolt.
Moon of Uranus
Information reaches us from the entrance of this concern that Voyager 2’s go to to Uranus in 1986 got here when the planet wasn’t its normal self, because of a gust of photo voltaic wind. In consequence, lots of our concepts about Uranus should be rethought – and a few consider it’s even potential there’s life on a number of of its moons.
Life on Uranus, you say? Really, life on Uranus’s moon? We hope it isn’t Klingons. Or as author Tess Stenson put it: NASA, “get your ass to Uranus”.
Suggestions spent extra time than we must always making an attempt to consider puns, however our slate has been cleaned. Some vibrant spark, aware of jokes in regards to the planet’s identify, determined to call all Uranus’s moons after Shakespeare characters, selecting respectable names like Rosalind and Oberon. This does imply we are able to rule out life on one of many moons: Juliet is certainly lifeless, there was a play about it. In the meantime, astronomers urgently want to search out some extra satellites so Uranus may be orbited by Backside.
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