Innocuity is now a recommended goal in naming a disease. “Discovered a disease? WHO has new rules for avoiding offensive names” is the headline on a report by Kai Kupferschmidt, in ScienceInsider. It says, in part: The World Health Organization (WHO) mostly works to reduce the physical toll of disease. But last week it turned to another […]
Tag: name
Feynman on the difference between names and what’s going on
Richard Feynman told stories that got people thinking. This passage from a talk Feynman gave at a meeting of the National Science Teachers Association in 1966 in New York City, was later printed — as part of a transcript of the entire talk — in The Physics Teacher, vol. 7, issue 6, 1969, pp. 313-320. The next day, Monday, we […]
The Case of the Four Goodmans
Our Multiplicity of Authors project gains a four-Goodman item (thanks to investigator Dorothy Petersen): “A Few Goodmen: Surname-Sharing Economist Coauthors,” Allen C. Goodman [Wayne State University], Joshua Goodman [Harvard University], Lucas Goodman [University of Maryland], Sarena Goodman [Federal Reserve Board], June 5, 2014. The authors explain: “We explore the phenomenon of coauthorship by economists who […]
Other-name calling by scientists
Scientists are a fractious lot. Near the end of a long discussion (in his study “Retinal ganglion cells responding selectively to direction and speed of image motion in the rabbit,” Horace B. Barlow, R.M. Hill, and W.R. Levick, The Journal of Physiology, vol. 173, no. 3, 1964, pp. 377-407.), Horace Barlow writes: “Much of this discussion […]