Burns in children. Psychiatric illness. Trauma to the head. These are serious subjects. You might find humor in anything if it’s something you’ve spent years studying. Many scientists attempt to be clever when it comes to the title of their articles, in an effort to make their work more interesting and fun. We’re fortunate to be able to laugh at the results.
Our blog, Seriously, Science?, has been collecting weird titles and scientific articles for over five year. (It was formerly known as NCBIROFL, for National Center for Biotechnology Information. PubMed is a repository of articles from scientific journals that NCBI maintains. This is why we changed our name. Here are our favorite images, divided into three main categories. But some may be in several groups.
References to literature and popular culture
Scientists aren’t the only ones who enjoy literary allusions. Neville Goodman performed an analysis of scientific publication titles and found that scientists often overuse certain (obviously) literary allusions. Based on a thorough search of PubMed, Goodman discovered that there were “more than 1,400 Shakespearean references.” One third refers to “What’s In a Name” and one third to Hamlet. The rest refer to “To Be or Not to be.” There were also 381 allusions to Back to the Future. And there were many to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. Here, “all sorts” of things have been used to replace clothes such as isodose curves or bone densitometry. Goodman says there aren’t “fat bottomed boys” (Queen 1979) and “Obstetricians ignore “Once unto their breech.” “
As a side note, this week’s British Medical Journal Christmas issue had a lighthearted (intentionally) edition. This issue featured a Swedish team of researchers analyzing Bob Dylan lyrics from the biomedical literature. The authors’ colleagues revealed that they had been sneaking Dylan lyrics in their articles for many years as part of an ongoing bet. The list includes title gems like “Like a Rolling Histone”, as well as “Knockin’ at Pollen’s door: Live cell imaging of early polarization events in Germinating Arabidopsis Pollen.” Although Dylan references were scarce prior to 1990, there have been a lot of Dylan references. Interestingly, six of the articles published in Nature included Dylan references.
These are some of the cleverer titles that we have seen. Some so absurd, we think the authors may have thought up the titles first and then figured out how to make the studies.
From Urethra with Shove: Bladder Foreign Bodies. Review and Case Report.
Wax on, wax off: Pubic hair grooming and potential complications
Guess Who Isn’t Coming To Dinner? For Disease Surveillance, Evaluating Online Reservations
A “Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose” is a common expression of a Gastric Adenocarcinoma.
These are some clever ways to leave your lover: The tactics people use to lure and discredit the process of human mating.
This paper’s about you, Narcissists’ Perceptions Of Their Personality And Reputation.
Carbon Monoxide: To boldly go where no one has gone before
Insensitive/Dark Humor
Some titles go too far with their jokes, especially for outsiders. These scientists may have chosen to make light of a serious topic by using the title of their paper. But there is dark humor and then there is just plain inappropriate.
Ashes To Ashes: Thermal Contact burns in children due to recreational fires.
An Unusual Penpal: A Case Report and Literature Review on Posterior Ural Injuries Secondary To Foreign Body Insertion
Lucky Catch: Tongue Injury from Fishhook.
“Here’s egg in your eye”: Prospective study of blurnt ocular traumas resulting from throwing eggs.
Mini-Magnets and Children: A Nearly Fatal Attraction
Factitious Diarrhea.
Heavy Metal has a high risk of neck and head injury.
Hung Jury: Transsexual Men’s Testimonies on Genital Surgery
Crazy Like a Fox: Ethics and Validity of Animal Models of Human Psychiatric Disease.
Are you unintentionally funny?
There are also titles that make it seem like humor is not intentional.
Friends with Benefits: A look at the positive consequences of pet ownership.
Practice Makes Perfect: Rectal Foreign Bodies.
Obscene telephone calls to children: A retrospective field study
Role of childhood aerobic fitness in successful street crossing.
Chemical processes in the Deep Interior Uranus
Do clever titles affect the quality of papers? According to one study, articles with humorous titles were more likely to be cited. The results were disappointing. Articles with amusing titles received less citations than articles with pleasant titles. However, they do get cited in our blog. Do you have any favorite articles titles? We would love to hear about your favorite article title.
