Niels Berg Olsen sent this (fabulously) discerning note: I enjoyed reading your item on Greek cheek in your fabulous book This is Improbable, Too [Printed and bound in Denmark…”]. I notice a difference in the text in the book and in your news item in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2005/jul/05/highereducation.research In the Guardian you wrote: “The report […]
A new typo of research has just been published in the medical journal Acta Neurochirurgica: “Brian retraction injury after elective aneurysm clipping: a retrospective single‑center cohort study,” by B. Konya, J. W. Dankbaar, and A. van der Zwan, 2022. (Thanks to Retraction Watch and Ivan Oransky for bringing this to our attention.)
A typographical error, like a Freudian slip, can sometimes reveal a hidden truth. An example — the phrase “high hell shoes” — appears in this medical study: “Evaluation of the influence of low and high heel shoes on erector spine muscle bioelectrical activity assessed at baseline and during movement,” Anna Mika, Łukasz Oleksy, Edyta Mikołajczyk, Anna Marchewka, […]
The ‘Fat Finger Syndrome’ is a semi-affectionate nickname used by computer programmers – meaning ‘making typing errors’. As anyone who has tried their hand at programming will know, a seemingly tiny error (for a human), for example simply substituting a ; for a : can render a programme completely unusable. But it […]
Our Typo Evaluation Committee informs us that this is likely to be a typo: On the effect of agricultural chemicals upon fish – I. Changes of chemical components in serum and liver of crap exposed to organophosphate compounds. Sakaguchi, H Bull. Jap. Soc. Sci. Fish. Vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 555-560. 1972.
As playwright Sir Tom Stoppard once put it : “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” The quote features on the faculty profile page [* see note below] of Edward C. Pease, Ph.D. Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator at […]
The title of this medical study probably contains a typographical error: “Enterobacter cloacae Septicemia in a Bum Center: Epidemiology and Control of an Outbreak,” C. Glen Mayhall, V. Archer Lamb, William E. Gayle Jr. and Boyd W. Haynes Jr,, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 139, Issue 2, 1979, pp. 166-171.
This week’s Sceret Question of the Week is “What is “The Scientist Song’?”. The answer: ‘The Scientist Song’ is a simple song about scientists, written for a TV producer’s challenge to write and sing a song in the studio, and performed by Joe DeGeorge, a physics student at Clark University. The TV program identifies itself […]
This study’s title appears to have a typo. Does it? “Heavy meals in urban roadside soils, part 1: effect of particle size fractions on heavy metals partitioning,” Xue-Song Wang, Yong Qin and Yong-Kang Chen, Environmental Geology, vol. 50, 2006, pp. 1061–1066. The authors are at Huaihai Institute of Technology, China University of Mining and Technology, […]
Yahoo Answers accepts questions that few other answer-all-questions services do. Here’s an example: “What is the difference between sociology and phycology?” Yahoo Answers says that the former “tends to examine groups of persons (societies), communities, and nations” while the latter “examines more of the workings of the human mind, why persons think and behave as […]