Amusing Quotes from Reviewers...

..of papers in Environmental Microbiology in 2010 can be found here.

These are my favourites:

* Done! Difficult task, I don't wish to think about constipation and faecal flora during my holidays! But, once a referee, always and anywhere a referee; we are good boy scouts in the research wilderness. Even under the sun and near a wonderful beach. 

*This paper is desperate. Please reject it completely and then block the author's email ID so they can't use the online system in the future.

*The biggest problem with this manuscript, which has nearly sucked the will to live out of me, is the terrible writing style.

*I usually try to nice but this paper has got to be one of the worst I have read in a long time.

*Well, I did some of the work the authors should have done!

* I feel like a curmudgeon, but I still have problems with this paper.

* The lack of negative controls. . . . results in the authors being lost in the funhouse. Unfortunately, I do not think they even realize this.

* Reject – More holes than my grandad's string vest!

* The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about.

Extraordinary!

On 8 August 2009 Norwich City, who had just sunk to the doldrums of League One (the English Third Division) were hammered 7-1 at home, the worst home defeat in their 107-year history, by the tiny minnows of Colchester United. That day of humiliation will ne'er be forgotten. However, the hitherto useless Board then miraculously saw the light, as they then summarily sacked the Norwich coach and (ahem, illegally) stole the Colchester coach, Paul Lambert (below), instead!



..............................Tough Glaswegian................


Now, 21 months later, Lambert has steered City not only to the League One championship but, today, to the English Premier League. Back to back promotions, on a shoestring budget, and trashing Ipswich twice (4-1 and 5-1) along the way! Surely the greatest achievement in City's history? Although 23 million pounds in debt, the club will now receive a slightly obscene 90 million pounds for joining the big guys.

Now in 2009 I did write a bitter, angry poem to accompany them on the way down to oblivion. But somehow poetry excels only in times of grief so there will be no lines of verse this time round.

But, ahh, the heart could sing like a Norwich Canary!

Watch out Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U: you're all in for a serious pecking next season!

Update: this is why teams have difficulty in scoring against Norwich.

Hmm.....

Hmm...despite being a wizened old republican, I can't begrudge 2bn viewers their gooey romantic feelings.

Notwithstanding, I couldn't help but chuckle at some of the wryer comments.

One, from a London Times writer, capturing Miss Middleton's strategic hoist from commoner to royalty, described hers as a tale of “shiny new money systematically raising a girl so perfectly to a prince’s eye level that she is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.”

And then, a commenter in our own beloved Knoxville News Sentinel: "She has perfect teeth. She can't be British. I demand to see a birth certificate."

Gorgeous!

The Tennessee State Senate

..a venerable chamber that performs sterling work for the people of the state (and the University of Tennessee).

However, were the senators sponsoring bills to be a little less clueless about what it is they are actually proposing, then certain birth pains would be avoided ....

Good Science Takes Time

One of the things about Martin Karplus that many of us impatient, ambitious young co-workers at Harvard used to complain about was how long it took to get one's work published with him. One of my manuscripts sat on his desk for 18 months then he lost it. But Martin is a perfectionist - for him a piece of scientific research needs time to mature, to develop, and he wanted to make sure all was rounded, completed, cross-checked, watertight. And so now Stefan Fischer, another perfectionist, has an article on haemoglobin with Martin just accepted in PNAS. The work was started in 1992 and so they have been polishing on it off and on for nearly 20 years. One would work on it a bit, then the other, then neither for a while. The result was a high quality piece of work. I'm sure every sentence was thoroughly thought through.

So why am I bringing this up? Firstly, to demonstrate the futility of funding agencies micromanaging projects and asking for immediate impact. This distracts from innovation. The impact of the money funding the above PNAS paper will be felt only 30 years later. This is not to try to circumvent accountability. Rather, that more emphasis on judging us should be placed on what we did years ago, rather than last week. And secondly, to my irritated students complaining about manuscript slowness after hearing nothing from me for a few weeks - think yourselves lucky, you might have ended up at Harvard! Happy 81st, Martin.

Setting Fish Free Bridge

This is the Fangsheng Bridge in Zhujiajiao, a Venetian-style Water Village near Shanghai that our host Dongqing Wei kindly took us to visit a week ago. Fangsheng is a 16th century "setting fish free" bridge, at the foot of which vendors sell bags of fish and turtles. Buyers then set them free in the water, thus smugly gaining merit according to Buddhism. (Did anyone ask the fish and turtles if they would rather have not been caught in the first place?).

In some ways the fish are an analogy to what China is trying to do with basic science - set it free. Funding for basic science is now doubling in the space of two years. Sounds impressive (although the actual dollar numbers will in the near term only approach those of NSF or BES, not surpass them). But judging by what we saw at Shanghai Jiao Tong University the building infrastructure is also in place. What seemed to me to be missing was a critical mass of top quality faculty. SJTU has started this recruitment, and we talked to some recent recruitees - all originally Chinese who had been in top positions in North America. Indeed, one of the natural consequences for the USA is that this funding increase, when coupled to the equivalent defunding proposed by the US Congress, should lead to a potentially large proportion of the brilliant young Chinese, of the type that have been dominating the contests for leading science positions in the USA over the last 20 years, preferring the exciting challenges beckoning in their country of origin.

Scientists are fish in bags - we can swim only wherever we happen to be set free.

Baron Cut-and-Paste

The German Minister of Defence resigned today. "Baron Cut-and-Paste" was found to have copied large parts of his law doctoral thesis without attribution. He lives in a castle in Bavaria with a beautiful wife, an aristocratic "dream of a politician" earmarked as a possible successor to Merkel. The poor dear is now undone by "Xerox-gate".

Will he now be consigned to oblivion? Will anyone even remember his name? Unlikely, given the length of it: Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. He could at least take out the "Maria". That wasn't serious for a defence minister. I suspect Donald Maria Rumsfeld wouldn't have had quite the same clout in the Oval Office back in 2002. Yes: shorten the name as well as the thesis, mate. After all, few remembered the name of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern Schleppenden Schlitter Krasskrenbon Fried Digger Dingle Dangle Dongle Dungle Burstein von Knacker Thrasher Apfel Banger Horowitz Tikolensich Grander Knotty Schpelltinkel Grandlich Grumbelmeyer Spelterwasser Kurzlich Himbeereisen Bahnwagen Gutenabend Bitte Ein Nürnburger Bratwurst Gerspurten Mit Weimacht Lueber Hundsfut Gumberaber Schönedanke Kalbsfleisch Mittler Aucher von Hautkopf of Ulm(*), did they?

[There's something about stories such as zu Guttenberg's that makes me feel illicitly warm and smug inside.......]

(*) lifted from Monty Python (It's the Arts).