This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
In honor of the recent Ig Nobel prizes, awarded for achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think," I present a few funny* things about scholarly citations.
We can poke fun at the sometimes selfish reasons to include citation in your own work. From the Annals of Improbable Research:
The real purpose of introductions, of course, is to cite your own work (e.g. Schulman et al. 1993a), the work of your advisor (e.g. Bregman, Schulman, & Tomisaka 1995), the work of your spouse (e.g. Cox, Schulman, & Bregman 1993), the work of a friend from college (e.g. Taylor, Morris, & Schulman 1993), or even the work of someone you have never met, as long as your name happens to be on the paper (e.g. Richmond et al. 1994).
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Occasionally, scientists stray from the jargon filled, obfuscating prose that makes up most journal article titles and add a touch of humor to the scholarly enterprise. This excellent post documents scholarly article titles that use movie titles for inspiration, with amusing results:
The behavior of renal cell carcinoma: sex, lies and tumor size
Some like it haute: leadership lessons from France's great chefs
Unfortunately, and to my great disappointment, a study of articles with amusing titles in prestigious psychology journals by Sagi and Yechiam (2008) found that these articles were less likely to be cited than other articles with unfunny titles. Since funny titles are often less descriptive of the actual research, these articles could be more difficult to find in databases.
Of course, creating a bibliography is never a fun task. The lengths that students will go to to avoid opening up the APA Style Guide can sometimes be amusing:
And of course the fabulous XKCD comic draws humor from the fact that while Wikipedia and publications need to cite their sources, public speakers could really use some citations too:
Have you noticed any ridiculous citations or absurd mistakes in bibliographies? Share with us below.
*I suppose this might depend on just how geeky your sense of humor is, but I think there are elements of the citation process that are pretty funny. Five thousand different citation styles!! Hilarious.
Works Cited:
Sagi, I., & Yechiam, E. (2008). Amusing titles in scientific journals and article citation. Journal of Information Science, 34(5), 680-687. doi:10.1177/0165551507086261
