For the past 17 years, a group of awesome Swedish scientists have been competing with each other over who could sneak the most Bob Dylan song lyrics into research papers before they retired. It all began when John Jundberg and Eddie Weitzburg, two professors at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm published an article on flatulence (!) entitled, “Nitric Oxide and inflammation: The answer is blowing in the wind.”
NPR reports:
“A few years later, two other scientists, Jonas Frisen and Konstantinos Meletis, picked up the riff in a research paper on the ability of non-neural cells to generate neurons, which they called "Blood on the Tracks: A Simple Twist of Fate," incorporating the title of one of Dylan's most famous albums with the song title of one of its most best-known cuts.
That's when, The Local says, a librarian spotted the Frisen and Meletis article and pointed it out to Jundberg and Weitzburg. The four scientists decided to make a bet: Whoever could squeeze the most Dylan song references into articles before retirement gets a free lunch at a restaurant in Solna, north of Stockholm, where the university is based.
Their stunt went viral when the website picked up their ongoing contest a few days ago.
We love when scientists are wacky and hate to be left out, so here are 21 (count 'em) humble proposals for scientific research that seamlessly integrate popular song lyrics. Any real scientists are more than welcome to use these as long as we get a shout out in the acknowledgements section.
- C-c-c-c-c-c-c-catch my breath: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and you
- You are the piece of me I wish I didn’t need: When tumors save lives
- Round and around and around and around we go: A practical theory of rotating solids
- Baby I’m just gonna shake-shake-shake-shake-shake: Ultrasensitive vibrating probes and the nanotechnological revolution
- She eats your heart out like Jeffrey Dahmer: Variations in myocardial necrosis caused by microvascular spasm
- You're far from plastic: A survey of numerous environmental applications of aliphatic polyesters
- We woke up in the kitchen saying, 'How the hell did this shit happen, oh baby': The psychogenesis of fugue states
- Make you feel unpretty, too: Effects of stigma on leprosy sufferers in the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe
- I will survive!: A comparative analysis of senescence in marine algae
- Love is so blind, it feels right when it's wrong: Unexpected predictors of mating success in the Trumpeter Finch
- The Midwest farmers’ daughter really makes you feel alright: A cross sample of indigenous farmers and their mates
- The touch of your hand can start me crying: Contact-provoked fibromyalgia in malnourished lab rats
- All the leaves are brown: Physical signifiers of climate imbalance in Northern Alaska
- They generate steam heat, pulsating to the back beat: Kinetics of the water-gas shift
- Purple haze was all in my eyes: A longitudinal study of carbon emissions and Arctic haze
- Looks like a girl but she’s a flame: Gender differences in borderline personality fire-setters
- All the right junk in all the right places: How to teach medical students that molecular structure matters
- You’re the glitter in the darkness of my world: Observation of a neutrino burst in deep space region 19378B
- Bang bang all over you: The effect of nuclear fallout on various strains of wheat grown around Three Mile Island
- Con tu física y tu química también tu anatomía: Building infrastructure for science education in Oaxaca
- I’m far from cheap, I break down companies with all my peeps: A review of literature surrounding corruption in the Southeast Asian financial sector
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