Thread by @AcademiaObscura

Seems like we could all do with some distraction and silliness right now, so I'm going to go ahead and tweet the entirety of the Academia Obscura book 📕

[thread, obviously]

(still haven't finished)

Here's what's coming:

♀

An academic blessing 🎓🙏

1

Still the greatest figure of all time 🐀

5

Publish and/or perish

10

14

More tomorrow! Stay safe everyone x

Good morning all :) Day two, here we go!

Forgot that I had a photo of the EDITORS BREED MOORE book 😂

(a couple of tweets back)

16. Writing is hard (co-authoring is harder)

Hellish author lists 😱😱😱

A Few Goodmen

19. Croquet and the Big Bang

"A curious ancient pastime"

You know you're tired when you forget the names of your co-authors and where your funding comes from 😂

22. Abstracts

Still can't believe they thought this was an appropriate graphical abstract for a scientific paper.

WHAT👏THE👏HELL👏IS👏WRONG👏WITH👏YOU

This is how you write a concise abstract

also this

and this

Will carry on a little bit later... If this format isn't working for you, I'd be happy to send you a pdf/ebook (though you will of course miss out on all the additional images and colour commentary!).

DM here/@MarinePolicy or email glenwwright (gmail)

25. Well-prepared cat

And again for those at the back: a well-prepared cat

26. Figures

wtf

29

oops

Obscure interlude...

First page of the Blackawton bees paper, perhaps the only article in a scientific paper to be written by school kids

The @royalsociety published the kids' hand-drawn figures in the journal, which is just lovely

#SaveTheBees

34. @starwars research

"Emperor Palpatine considered that the true power of the technological terror is from the power of economic terror unleashed in the case of its failing; i.e., in case of the Rebel Alliance succeeding, an automatic financial attack on the entire Galaxy would be realized."

Figure 2.1: Not a moon!

Using @starwars supporting characters to teach about psychopathology

Evolving ideals of male body image as seen through action toys

37.

Rent a paper, just $6 an hour 😂

43.

Potatoes, they are important

Quarantine reading

Dr Merry Jeans 😂

Strategically titled journals, by @redpenblackpen

"It is early in the year, but difficult to imagine any paper overtaking this one for lack of imagination, logic, or data – it is beyond redemption."

Ouch.

Peer review, by @redpenblackpen

How to respond to peer review

That time Einstein rejected a rejection

Always reviewer 2 😑

'The Dawn of Peer Review' - more excellent academic humour from @redpenblackpen

Quick-fire Interview with @Protohedgehog

64. Retractions

The infamous LaCour scandal, first reported by @RetractionWatch

The bizarre story of Diedrek Stapel. NYT article here: nytimes.com/2013/04/28/mag…

What is with tin foil?

Interview with @ivanoransky, founder of @RetractionWatch

Good morning everyone :) Hope you are managing to stay sane and healthy. More pages to come today, starting with the Sokal affair and other journal hoaxes:

78.

The original SciGen paper is here: pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen…

Credit: @mbeisen

Unsub-f*cking-scribe

Interview with @melissaterras about depictions of academics in kids books. Very cool!

"She had enough university degrees to paper her toilet walls. Some people said she was a genius. Some people said she was a nutter." 😂

📕 Professor Blabbermouth on the Moon, by Nigel Watts, illustrated by Jamie Smith (Scholastic Children’s Books 1996)

Figure 11: The Professor's Lecture

📕 Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893)

Check out @melissaterras blog for 41 pages of such whimsical depictions of academics in kids books: …miainchildrenspicturebooks.tumblr.com

Here is a great summary of the project and her findings: melissaterras.org/2014/02/05/mal…

You can also check out @melissaterras books here: melissaterras.org/2018/10/29/aca…

(both open access!)

Here are some of my favourites ❤️🎓

🎓 Professor de Breeze

📕 Dr Seuss, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? (Random House Books for Young Readers, 1973)

🎓 Professor Peabody

📕 Professor Peabody, by Giles Reed, Illustrations by Angela Mitson (Studio Publications (Ipswich) Limited, 1979)

🎓 Professor Goggles

📕 Topsys and Turvys, by Peter Newell (1893)

🎓 Professor Wiseman

…miainchildrenspicturebooks.tumblr.com/post/918729431…

This academic turned ripped street-shark is a lot to process

(The Birth of Dr Piranoid, adapted by Cynthia Alvarez from the screenplay by Martha Moran. Illustrated by Serrat Studio. Random House, New York 1995.)

I... appear to have messed up the threading here... maybe? Continues 👇

https://twitter.com/AcademiaObscura/status/1242088180804968450

24. Footnotes [missed a page!]

🧔🧔🧔

Strong correlation between beard length and skirt length 🧔👗🤔

Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men, American Society for Microbiology (1967)

On to academic writing now, a chapter that contains some of my favourite nuggets of academic ridiculousness :)

CORRECTION!: frequency of beards and skirt width

Key words: enough; already.

An unreasonably long footnote

Figure 13. The Writing Process (@redpenblackpen)

The Isolator
Science & Invention magazine (1925)

Self-treatment of "Writer's Block", a brief review of the literature.

¡¡¡

Abstract indeed

❤️

[mini side-thread of unusual acknowledgments]

Thanks to the anonymous reviewers 🕵️‍♂️🕵️‍♀️🕵️

Thanks for nothing 😡🤬

Thanks to the burglars that stole, inter alia, my cheese 🧀

Thanks for the cocaine!

Thanks for the ongoing and unwavering support.

Thanks for the wine 🍷

Thanks for the 4.5-year long review process 👍

Thanks Bush administration.

Thanks for rejecting my grant proposals.

Thank you for not sending us the money.

A plague on their house 🐀🐀🐀🏡

Selected p-value workarounds

112.

Fuck

Fuck nuance

SEXWASP 🐝

References:

Academic translator

Praxis

#OverlyHonestMethods

"I need a full-length Atlantic Salmon. For science."

Full paper here: prefrontal.org/files/posters/…

Depressed salmon is depressed :(

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.10…

"Those who can,
do.
Those who can’t,
teach.

Unless you are an academic,
in which case,
you probably have to teach,
regardless of your ability."

Novel grading strategies

😂🎉🐶

Golden retrievers with party hats on

More novel grading strategies

Wasting time on the internet

Table 5: Underwater basket-weaving and other Mickey Mouse classes*

Social Theory through Complaining, by @kjhealy

134. Read the Syllabus!

Making the grade

THE POLAR BEARS MADE ME DO IT

135. Rate My Professors

*

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Full story:

Food, glorious food 🥦🥕🍕🍒🍆🥮🥡

🫖 A lovely cup of tea ☕️

Impact & outreach

Coffee + amphetamines = math

Keeping up with the Kardashians

Alternative impact metrics

Self-citation

"Like nuclear energy, the impact factor is a mixed blessing."
~ Eugene Garfield

Spooky science, a little late for Halloween...

Extract from "Sport in Vampire Society"

Academics have taken to Twitter like a duck to Twitter

Cool folks to follow: @AstroKatie @TheLitCritGuy @ResearchMark @AcademicsSay @IAmOxfordComma @AcademicBatgirl

@NeinQuarterly

@AcademicsSay

An interview with @AcademicBatgirl. POW!

The dark side of academic Twitter

A summary of my favourite academic twitter hashtags:
#AcademicsWithCats
#BadAdviceForYoungAcademics
#RuinADateWithAnAcademicInFiveWords
#FailAPhdInThreeWords
#ScienceAMovieQuote
#AcademicForecast
#AcademicNovel

"My music professor makes us stay after class and play Twister with him to make up attendance. Dead serious. I find a problem with this, no?"

❤️🎓

Academic conferences: "Custom dictates that the majority of panels feature only male speakers; that slides should be overfilled, illegible, and written by the speaker on the way to the conference; and that audience questions should actually be long-winded comments"