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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:24am on 2017-08-26

"'Neuroskeptic' of Discover magazine found four allegedly peer-reviewed science journals happy to accept a paper on Star Wars 'midi-chlorians', based on Wikipedia's mitochondria entry (after a quick search-and-replace and thesaurus shuffling), peppered with references to the Force, Darth Plagueis of the Sith, etc., and signed as by Dr Lucas McGeorge and Dr Annette Kin. Of nine targeted journals, five rejected this nonsense (full marks to JSM Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for 'The authors have neglected to add the following references: Lucas et al., 1977, Palpatine et al., 1980, and Calrissian et al., 1983'); three published the paper; one accepted it but wanted a $360 publication fee which was not forthcoming." -- Paul Barnett in David Langford's Ansible #361, 2017-08-01, describing/citing "Predatory Journals Hit By 'Star Wars' Sting", Discover, 2017-07-22 [the Ansible description is snappier but the Discover original has additional amusing details. The fake paper itself is now on Scribd, but I haven't read it yet because Scribd doesn't seem to want to play nicely with my browsers.]

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There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
madfilkentist: My cat Florestan (gray shorthair) (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] madfilkentist at 11:18am on 2017-08-26
I can read it in Scribd, though it's badly formatted. I think all f's have been turned into a non-printing character. Here's a bit of it:

Did you ever hear the tragedy o Darth Plagueis the Wise? I thought not. It is not a story the Jedi would tell you. It was a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord o the Sith, so powerul and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians [17] to create lie. Tis process increases the number o reducing equivalents available to the midichlorial electron transport chains, and thus generates Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) [14,15]. He had such knowledge [18] o the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about rom dying [20]. Te dark side o the Force’s a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
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volare: The covered bridge in Pepperell MA (The Bridge)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] volare at 03:21pm on 2017-08-26
Cackling into my coffee, thank you for this one!
Mad props indeed to JSM...
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siderea: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] siderea at 04:45pm on 2017-08-26
'The authors have neglected to add the following references: Lucas et al., 1977, Palpatine et al., 1980, and Calrissian et al., 1983'

AHAHAHAHA
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