Acknowledgements
| 12 August, 2011 | Richard P. Grant |
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The other week we were comparing notes on the seriousness of articles published in certain leading journals. One of the papers was reporting on a trial, Does the fly matter? The CRACKPOT study in evidence based trout fishing. Another was the notorious Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials satire.
While the latter paper makes some serious points (and, unfortunately, is ammo for the muppet brigade), what caught my eye was the footnotes:
GCSS had the original idea. JPP tried to talk him out of it. JPP did the first literature search but GCSS lost it. GCSS drafted the manuscript but JPP deleted all the best jokes. GCSS is the guarantor, and JPP says it serves him right.
So I’m wondering, what’s the best Acknowledgement/Footnote/other endnote matter you’ve seen? A copy of Sydney Brenner’s book to the best!
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BioScienceMum pointed this one out last week, From Mike Fowler:
“…JL is assisted by Heavy Medication plc.” in
Fowler, MS & Lindstrom J (2002) Extinctions in simple and complex communities. OIKOS 99: 511–517
which I would have mentioned anyway. I think it came up in a discussion with Mike about the use of the word “buffeted” in the scientific literature. Either that or we were discussing the events that lead up to this in the acknowledgements:
“The order of the authors was determined by the result of the South Africa–
England cricket ODI on 27 September 2009, which England won by 22
runs.”
I don’t think many Indian co-authors will be taking up similar bets at the moment.
Might one be permitted a snigger, or would that be unprofessional? Thanks Bob!
I guess you’ll have to wait to snigger in your own tine, and not whilst you’re working.
I’ve lost the reference, but there’s a paper with two authors somewhere that has a footnote saying “Author order determined by cookie bake-off”.
While not exactly an acknowledgment per se, this is a footnote to the short but pithily wonderful paper by D Upper, “The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of ‘writer’s block'” (J Appl Behav Anal. 1974 Fall;7(3):497). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/
“Portions of this paper were not presented at the
81st Annual American Psychological Association
Convention, Montreal, Canada, August 30, 1973.”
And of course, from the excellent follow-on study by Didden et al., “A Multisite Cross-Cultural Replication of Upper’s (1974) Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of Writer’s Block”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2078566/
“Preparation of this article was supported by a grant of $2.50 from the first author’s personal funds. We hope to submit a version of this paper at the next international conference in St. Tropez.”
Ah hahahha hahahah hahahah.
Essence of brilliance.