Feedback is 快猫短视频鈥檚 popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com
New kind of microscope?
Science is one of the most fruitful sources of new terminology. There鈥檚 nothing like a surfeit of terms like 鈥渕itochondrial synthesis鈥� and 鈥渜uantum fluctuations鈥� to make your writing sound authoritative
Advertisement
Recently there has been a spate of scientific papers containing the phrase 鈥溾��. The term suggests a device for scanning broccoli, but it is utter nonsense. There are scanning electron microscopes and tunnelling electron microscopes, but not vegetative electron microscopes.
One possible explanation was proposed by Alexander Magazinov, a software engineer who moonlights as a watchdog for scientific publishing. He pointed to a in Bacteriological Reviews, the text of which was formatted into two columns. , the words 鈥渧egetative鈥� and 鈥渆lectron microscopy鈥� appear next to each other, in the left and right columns. Old papers have often been scanned using optical character recognition, but such software sometimes struggles to deal with complicated formats. 鈥溾��, according to Magazinov, is 鈥渁n artefact of text processing鈥�.
However, the journalists at Retraction Watch , which had been . In Farsi, the phrases 鈥渟canning electron microscope鈥� and 鈥渧egetative electron microscope鈥� sound extremely similar and, crucially, they use near-identical characters: the only difference is a single dot, a diacritic known as a nuqta. This means a tiny mistake in translating a paper from Farsi to English would suffice to create 鈥渧egetative electron microscopy鈥�.
These explanations aren鈥檛 mutually exclusive, and Feedback is satisfied that we can account for the emergence of this phrase. The bigger question is why it persists in published studies. Are these papers not rigorously , to ensure a high degree of accuracy and thus preserve the integrity of the scientific literature? Perhaps such 鈥渢ortured phrases鈥� should be included in a checklist of warning signs that a paper may be plagiarised or fraudulent.
Readers who have encountered similar tortured phrases in their perusals of the technical literature are invited to submit them to the usual address.
A nun too far
Sometimes, Feedback receives a story that feels too good to be true. The set-up is so neat, and the payoff so simultaneously surprising and inevitable, that we doubt ourselves. Is reality ever so neat? And then we remember that the Titanic was the largest ship ever at the time it was built and on its maiden voyage when the bad thing happened. Sometimes, reality is melodramatic. So, maybe we believe this story happened exactly as described, and maybe we don鈥檛.
It comes to us from Charlie Wartnaby, whose late father John was a curator at the Science Museum in London. It relates, inevitably, to the Scunthorpe problem: the difficulty of banning offensive words in online discussions when the same letter strings can appear in harmless words like 鈥減eacock鈥� and 鈥淪ussex鈥�.
John鈥檚 story isn鈥檛, strictly speaking, an example of the Scunthorpe problem, but it鈥檚 definitely adjacent to it. As Charlie explains: 鈥淚n the earliest days of the computing gallery, a machine was set up such that members of the public could type and see their words on a large screen, a great novelty for its day.鈥�
This may seem like an invitation to misbehave. Readers will thus be pleased to learn that staff anticipated the inevitable attempt to write torrents of filth on the large screen for all to see. They drew up 鈥渁 long list of profanities鈥�, all of which were blocked.
鈥淎ll was well鈥�, Charlie says, until the system was taken down by the most dangerous person possible: a computer expert. Trying to use the machine, he noticed that some keystrokes didn鈥檛 do anything. 鈥淚nvestigating, he managed to pull up the entire list of offending (or offensive) words on the big screen for all to see 鈥� allegedly including a visiting party of convent school children and supervising nuns.鈥�
Feedback is prepared to believe 90 per cent of this story, but in the absence of independent verification, we draw the line at the nuns. However, we are also willing to be wrong about this. If any convent school children were in the Science Museum on that fateful day 鈥� and we suspect you鈥檇 remember 鈥� please get in touch.
Yodel-eh-oh
Senior news editor Sophie Bushwick draws our attention to a press release titled 鈥� yodellers 鈥� new research鈥�. It describes a study that looks at 鈥渟pecial anatomical structures鈥� in the throats of apes and monkeys, called vocal membranes. These membranes allow the monkeys to perform 鈥渢he same rapid transitions in frequency heard in Alpine yodelling鈥�, but over 鈥渁 much wider frequency range鈥�, sometimes 鈥渆xceeding three musical octaves鈥�.
After a build-up like that, Feedback went, with bated breath, to find the accompanying of a tufted capuchin monkey. We anticipated an ululating call that evoked The Sound of Music or Dutch rock-yodellers Focus. What we got was, approximately, 鈥渟kroark rark eek鈥�. And now we understand why Sophie told us that she 鈥渃an鈥檛 stop laughing鈥�.
However, a closer look reveals a missed opportunity. By all means, show us a tufted capuchin 鈥測odelling鈥�, but the study also included howler monkeys.
Got a story for Feedback?
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week鈥檚 and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.
