Confessions first. The inspiration for this quirky-titled blog comes from an equally unusual and brilliant blog by Nature Chemistry resident wordsmith and chief editor Stuart Cantrill. The journal is rolling out its 50th issue in May 2013 and Cantrill lists, in his trademark style, all the seriously funny things these guys do at Nature Chemistry. What all [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] goes on at the Nature Publishing Group in the name of science, I tell you!
The mention of the ‘swear word’ in the title of this blog is just to get your attention. Erm, yes you read that right the first time. Why? Amusingly, among the 50 wonderful things (coinciding with the 50th edition) Cantrill lists, one is how the f-word made its debut in Nature Chemistry through one of their blogrolls in July last year. Also the explanation for it. I’m not sure if the word or similar such have a longer association with NPG. I shall investigate that for our curious readers. Coincidentally, the blog also mentions why the journal uses ‘f’ for sulfur and does not spell it ‘sulphur’. Some coincidences just fit in so well, don’t they? In fact, the first draft of this blog’s headline read ‘Of the f-word &…’ but I rephrased it for reasons that might need a separate blog to elaborate.
Gets us back to the oft-debated question of why serious academic journals continue to remain stiff and refrain from embracing a little bit of pop punch in their writing. Also, why eyebrows are raised when editors try to experiment with not-so-serious headlines or off-beat formats for something that fall within the realms of so called “serious science”? All this even while they have tried hard to do so without “dumbing down the science”. Takes me to two fine topical reads: one by Kaj Sand-Jensen of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark titled How to write consistently boring scientific literature and the other by Adam Ruben — The unwritten rules of journalism. There is a huge lot of interesting literature to be read in this regard, please feel free to point us and our readers to them in the comment section.
Science bloggers, of course, are a league apart and have made science reading online a lot more bearable. More strength to their ever-growing breed!
I see Nature Chemistry do a whole lot of such refreshing things. At Nature India, we have tried playing around with fun headlines for a while now — some have been brilliant, some a bit far-fetched, some turned out dumb and some were plain eyeball-grabbing exercises (the present blog being an excellent case study in the latest category). Sample these and you’ll know which one belongs where (or nowhere): Long live chapattis, Care for some gum?, Don’t kill the mice, Smell my tea, Guava for gold, The nano love triangle, Magnetic charm in the genes and Honey, I shrunk the antioxidants.
Some more apparently thought-provoking ones meant to draw you into reading (there, we are giving out our secrets!): Go for whole blood, Do scientists believe in God, ghosts, Women are from Venus, are magnetic bacteria from Mars?, Wanted: traffic policemen for space, Michael Jackson and science, You haven’t got mail, Rat race for chocolate and Old habits don’t die.
Ajayan{credit}Rice University{/credit}
And to fully justify the headline of this particular blog (as also my salary and job), I must turn my attention back to Cantrill’s blog. Here’s the newsy bit for Nature India’s readers — Nature Chemistry‘s most cited article with 390 citations till date is by an Indian-American Pulickel Ajayan and his co-workers. The paper ‘New insights into the structure and reduction of graphite oxide‘ is by Ajayan and his group at Rice University in Texas, USA.
Interestingly, apart from 370 journal papers with more than 32,000 citations and an h-index of 89, Ajayan is a double Guinness Book record holder — one for the creation of the smallest brush and the other for creating the darkest material. Ajayan’s early education was in Kerala, India and he moved out of the country with a metallurgical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University,Varanasi. He is a keen poet and has been quoted in the past as saying that if he didn’t stumble into the world of carbon nanotubes he might as well have been a movie director.
Now how much more punch can one pack into a single hydra-headed blog struggling to stay focused!