Academia Obscura

by Glen Wright

  SPOOKY SCIENCE

  Crime writers often refer to the ‘smell of death’ lingering in the air after a grisly murder scene is encountered. Science tells us that decay starts four minutes after death,1 and produces a smell comprising a complex bouquet of more than 800 ‘cadaveric volatile compounds’.2 In a PLOS One study, a team of researchers ‘sniffed’ a decaying pig* using ‘comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry’ (which I bet sounds much cooler than it really is). Another study investigating this topic was published in the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry,† but failed to detect two compounds – cadaverine and putrescine – as these are only found in decaying human cadavers and not pigs.3

  In 2012, many doomsday evangelists predicted the end of the world, coincident with the end of the Mayan calendar.4 Paul Wheatley-Price et al. wrote a paper considering how research might be affected by our then-imminent extinction.5 While they argue that clinical trials would become useless in the absence of human subjects, their computer modelling shows that population actually begins to increase in the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse, even when controlling for known sources of bias.* The only plausible explanation, they conclude, is a post-apocalyptic zombie repopulation.

  While the world did not end in 2012, zombies, and other mythical or undead beings, remain a concern. A paper in Skeptical Inquirer aims to explain away zombies, ghosts, and vampires with the power of maths and physics.6 The authors argue, for example, that cold chills caused by ghosts are simply due to poor insulation, and note the amusing paradox that ghosts are often portrayed as walking, despite having no physical body.†

  Vampires can be proven not to exist with some simple mathematical modelling: assuming arbitrarily that the first vampire appeared in the year 1400, that vampires feed once a month (a ‘highly conservative assumption given any Hollywood vampire film’), and that each time a vampire feasts upon a human, their respective populations increase/decrease by one, a basic geometric progression suggests that vampires would wipe out humans in approximately 2.5 years. There is no way that human birth rates could outpace this, so our continued existence precludes the existence of vampires.

  A Norwegian study, however, claims that vampires are real and that the Balkans are especially haunted.7 Is it possible, the authors ask, to repel vampires with garlic? No vampires were available for study so leeches were used instead, and it turns out that leeches by far prefer a hand smeared in garlic to one without. The authors therefore recommend tight restrictions be placed on the use of garlic in vampire-dense regions.

  We can also stop worrying about zombies. The usual zombie paradigm is similar to that of vampires, so the same mathematical logic applies. However, isolated cases of zombification are apparently possible. In one curious case, Haitian boy Wilfrid Doricent appeared to be dead, but returned from the grave, without memory or effective cognition, having dug himself out. The zombie effects appear to have been caused by a poison brewed by an angry uncle (using the toxin from a puffer fish similar to that used in the Japanese delicacy fugu), while non-fatal brain damage had been caused by the lack of oxygen available in the grave.8

  Figure 15: Academic Halloween costumes

  Notes

  For the love of trees, I have opted to keep this bibliography (relatively) short. For more details, please go to AcademiaObscura.com/buffalo, where I plan to concoct a multimedia extravaganza containing links, photos, and videos. If I get distracted and don’t get around to doing this (highly likely), I will at the very least provide full references and PDFs (where I can do so legally).

  * This paper provides another example where the subject matter provided the authors with an opportunity to include a horrific graphic.

  † The journal rather satisfyingly abbreviates to Anal Bioanal Chem when using some style guides.

  * Including ‘astronauts currently aboard the international space station . . . Dungeons and Dragons players, men who have read Fifty Shades of Grey and other similar beings likely to be unaffected by the apocalypse’.

  † ‘It seems strange to have a supernatural power that only allows you to get around by mimicking human ambulation . . . a very slow and awkward way of moving about in the scheme of things.’

  1 Vass, ‘Beyond the Grave – Understanding Human Decomposition’ (2001) Microbiology Today.

  2 Dekeirsschieter et al., ‘Enhanced Characterization of the Smell of Death by Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography-Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (GCxGC-TOFMS)’ (2012) PLOS ONE.

  3 DeGreeff & Furton, ‘Collection and Identification of Human Remains Volatiles by Non-Contact, Dynamic Airflow Sampling and SPME-GC/MS Using Various Sorbent Materials’ (2011) Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.

  4 See ‘2012 Phenomenon’, Wikipedia.

  5 Wheatley-Price et al., ‘The Mayan Doomsday’s Effect on Survival Outcomes in Clinical Trials’ (2012) Canadian Medical Association Journal.

  6 Efthimiou & Gandhi, ‘Cinema Fiction vs Physics Reality’ (2006) arXiv.

  7 Sandvik & Baerheim, ‘Does Garlic Protect against Vampires? An Experimental Study’ (1994) Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen.

  8 Efthimiou & Gandhi, ‘Cinema Fiction vs Physics Reality’ (2006) arXiv. See also Mo, ‘The Ethnobiology of Voodoo Zombification’ (2007) ScienceBlogs.

  Academics have taken to Twitter like a duck to Twitter: around one in forty scholars now admits to using the microblogging site.1 While there is the inevitable scholarly chat and self-promotion, Twitter also acts as something of a virtual water cooler, a place where academics go to build community, have some fun, and let off steam.

  I feel smarter just by following the likes of astronomer Katie Mack and The Lit Crit Guy, who have a knack for posting witty and engaging musings on fields I normally wouldn’t venture into,*2 and a few academic superstars have built up a level of fervent popularity that would have been unimaginable before social media.

  As with other online communities, academics have created a host of niche parody accounts. Academic Batgirl and Research Mark (Wahlberg) are perennial favourites, and there is an (over)abundance of Angry Professor/Overworked Grad Student type accounts. Fake Elsevier does an excellent, albeit sporadic, job of poking fun at the traditional academic publishing model, while others, like Shit My Reviewers Say, lift the lid on the publication process. Even the Oxford comma has its own account.

  • Elsevier’s new sharing policy allows you to verbally explain your scholarly work to badgers and other woodland creatures.

  Fake Elsevier (@FakeElsevier)

  • Call me kinky, but I like to be used.

  Oxford Comma (@IAmOxfordComma)

  NEIN

  Former Ivy League German professor Eric Jarosinski admits he was initially internet averse. A few years ago a friend introduced him to Twitter. While he didn’t get it at first, he followed a bunch of comedians and soon started to see its potential. Then he started Nein Quarterly (@NeinQuarterly).

  Nein promises a ‘Compendium of Utopian Negation’ and delivers a unique brand of nihilistic snark and sarcasm. Eric’s following has grown to around 150,000 followers, and is supplemented by a weekly column in the prestigious German newspaper Die Zeit. Impossible to pigeonhole, Eric says he is simply writing jokes inspired by the terse and astute observations of Karl Kraus, an early 20th-century Austrian writer and satirist, and others.

  His pithy musings incorporate word play, puns, contradiction, and are often linked to current affairs or daily life.

  • If you need me, I’ll be wondering why. Then how. Then for how much longer.

  • Youth. Wasted on the wrong demographic.

  • The Tickle Me Werner Herzog I got for Christmas only laughs when I tell him the universe isn’t utterly indifferent to our pain.

  • Every now and then you should step back. Take a look at your life. And keep stepping back.

  The constraints of Twitter’s 140 characters was a welcome antidote to the frustrations of academic writing. In
an interview, Jarosinski told the Local, ‘It feels so different than the emptiness of a whole page on a laptop and so those constraints for me really brought about the creativity.’3

  Not only that, but he was good at it. In July 2015, he quit his job at the University of Pennsylvania to develop the alter ego full time. He has now toured the world and published Nein: A Manifesto.4

  SHIT ACADEMICS SAY

  Professor Nathan C. Hall is a professor in the learning sciences programme at McGill University. He is also the creator of the wildly successful Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay).

  Initially anonymous, in his revealing interview with the Chronicle Hall describes himself as ‘A rank-and-file academic with the job of balancing respectable research with acceptable teaching evaluations and sitting on enough committees to not be asked to sit on more committees.’5 In fact, he is undoubtedly one of the most influential, and funniest, people in academic social media.

  Hall started the SAS Twitter account in September 2013, with the inaugural tweet, ‘Don’t become an academic’. He now has almost a quarter of a million followers.

  After a few years in the ivory tower, Hall was feeling fatigued by academic life. As he approached the holy grail of tenure, he started to feel the need to do something a bit different, so he got a Twitter account. ‘It’s hard to describe the giddy grade-school excitement of jumping into a rapid-fire fray of remarkably creative, clever, and brutally honest tweets from academics around the world’, he told the Chronicle.

  Hall has a wicked sense of humour and his tweets, sent from his phone while working out or waiting for the end of his daughter’s ballet class, are a hit. The most popular fall into two categories: snarky quips that are instantly relatable to almost any academic, and amusing riffs on common phrases and clichés.

  Favourites of the former kind include:

  • I do my best proofreading after I hit send.

  • I am away from the office and checking email intermittently. If your email is not urgent, I’ll probably still reply. I have a problem.

  • Deep down, academics want the same thing as everyone else: acceptance, with minor revisions.

  Those in the latter include:

  • Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to use gender-neutral pronouns and he’ll feel uncomfortable with many popular metaphors.

  • Choose a discipline you love and you’ll never work a day in your life likely because that field isn’t hiring.

  • Two academics walk into a bar. They bring their own drinks, pay $5,000, and leave feeling proud and ashamed. It’s a publishing metaphor.

  • If you can’t say anything nice.*

  In a particularly self-reflective tweet he says: ‘I’m not procrastinating. I’m actively engaging in the disruption of traditional academic narratives via social media.’

  Hall has indeed been doing more than just procrastinating. He started SAS Confidential, a blog covering pressing issues in academic life, and has used SAS to recruit thousands of faculty and graduate students into a comprehensive study into the psychological well-being of academics.

  THE ACADEMIC TWITTER SUPERHERO

  Dr Academic Batgirl is an Associate Academic Superhero and Overall Badass. She spreads scholarly peace and academic love, all the while protecting Gotham from academic posers and offensive grammar.*

  Nice cape! Do you wear it in the office?

  I’m considering it. Twitter has been witness to heated debate over what ‘acceptably dressed’ women – and, in particular, professors – should wear. I think if I wore my cape to class, research meetings, and faculty council, it might solve that wardrobe nonsense.

  What gave you the idea of developing an academic alter ego?

  Academic Batgirl is a superhero in two places where gender is a big deal: the ivory tower and the jungles of social media. Full-time male faculty members still outnumber women by nearly 20%, and, among other inane gaps, gender biases have been shown to exist in the perception of quality in scientific studies. When I first joined Twitter, there were no female academic meme-makers. My pal Research Mark needed a female counterpart. To my knowledge, there are still no other female academics who make memes for scholarly consumption. Bam!

  Why Twitter?

  There’s a particular challenge and joy to being witty and interesting in 140 characters. Plus, there are more academics with a Twitter presence than on other social media platforms – Twitter is clearly the happening place for academics.

  Why Batgirl?

  She’s a librarian by day and a badass, crime fightin’ ass-kicker by night (kind of like most academic women), so the choice was obvious. My Batgirl persona is also a hat-tip to my brother – when he was a kid, his teachers feared that he truly believed himself to be Batman, so we’ve got a Bat theme in my family.

  You left for a while and Gotham mourned. Now you’re back! Where did you go?

  I had been on Twitter for about a year and had over 5,000 followers. My presence, in addition to making clever memes, included offering support to early career academics, advice to writers, and creating a sense of academic community. Then, I happened upon a real-life Joker. He was a full professor with a razor-sharp mind, enviable intellect, and remarkable ability to quantify any data by any means possible.

  However, he was ridiculously controlling and didn’t like that I was my own woman. He told me, right to my face, ‘This Twitter account is nothing to be proud of.’ ‘You want me to tell people that you run this Academic Batgirl account? That’s embarrassing.’ ‘No real academic would need Twitter to help with their career.’ ‘People who use social media are less trustworthy.’ And, ‘I would be a lot happier if you just quit this whole Twitter thing.’ Like many bullied people, I gave in.

  I’m sorry to hear that. What made you come back?

  The need for academic superheroes is very real. So real, in fact, that I couldn’t even satisfy the need in my own offline academic life. I had ‘outed’ myself to two people on Twitter, and told them what had happened in real life that forced me to disappear. These friends contacted me several times to let me know that people were asking where I went, why, and when I’d be back. These friends really did call me back to my senses. I mustered up the guts to tell the critical Academic Joker where to go. And it was awesome. Pow!

  What kinds of people do you follow and why?

  I follow some mind-blowingly interesting and intelligent scholars. I’ve connected with a dog psychology scholar, a chemist from my hometown, and a legal studies scholar. I follow cool people who study volcanoes, wolves, botany, surgery, palliative care, and queer culture. I have no training in these areas and I don’t publish in the journals that they do. I follow these folks because they are good people doing meaningful research, and learning is fun. In addition to following, I’ve become legit friends with some of these super cool folks.

  Favourite hashtag?

  #GetYourManuscriptOut. Somehow I’ve become one of its biggest proponents, along with Raul Pacheco-Vega and Steve Shaw.* I support this hashtag because it has sincerely helped me. I struggle in that I get distracted by new, shiny research projects, and I sometimes think I’ll ditch the manuscript I’m working on to get started on something different.

  A lot of academics get bored easily, and many of us suffer from thinking that the next research project will be more fun, more successful, or maybe just easier. The #GetYourManuscriptOut hashtag helps to build collective support for finishing what you started (ooh! I sort of quoted Van Halen there).

  Most popular tweet?

  I made a meme featuring Yvonne Craig as Batgirl, and she’s wearing a stern expression. The text reads:

  ‘I AM AN ACADEMIC. This means that I live and work in a fantasy world in which everything is proofread (twice), and no one believes anything he/she hears or sees without consulting the data. THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING.’

  I think that one was so popular because it’s not discipline-specific, and it captures the meticulousness of academi
c thought and lifestyle. People must have seen themselves in that meme – the serious expression with a rather self-deprecating sentiment was funny because it read like an academic PSA. As in, ‘I know I’m ferocious about loving data and being rigorous in all inquiry, but you love me anyway, don’t you?’

  Favourite onomatopoeia(s)?

  Bam! Pow! Zowie!

  THE DARK SIDE OF ACADEMIC TWITTER

  If these people (and anthropomorphised punctuation) represent the best of academic Twitter, the now-defunct @GradElitism represented the worst of it. The account had managed to attract 40,000 followers by reposting others’ jokes without attribution (i.e. plagiarising). A self-appointed watchdog (who later turned out to be Nathan Hall) sprang into action, calling out the plagiarism and getting the offending account closed in a matter of weeks. This brief campaign was no doubt buoyed by the news that Twitter had started clamping down on joke theft.6

  Some of the darker, spammier corners of academic Twitter don’t make any sense to me at all. For example, there’s a cluster of profiles that look like student accounts, but post nothing but a never-ending stream of tweets advertising university courses (one that I see all the time posts one tweet every five minutes, over 300,000 in total). They are then instantly retweeted by 20–100 similarly pointless accounts. Presumably this is a marketing ploy, but it would take a lot more than an onslaught of overwhelmingly bland tweets to convince me to take an ‘Introduction to Mathematics’ course.

  A recent addition to the list of questionable Twitter enterprises is Real Peer Review. Run by a group of anonymous academics, the account aims to pick out papers that they believe are lacking in intellectual rigour or value. The group argues that ‘such laughably broken “research” is a natural consequence of any sufficiently isolated and ideologically homogenous community’ and takes a ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ approach to rectifying it.7