If you took an infinite number of Professors, added some comedians, recording studios (instead of typewriters) and got them to record random radio shows you might just end up with a program like the Infinite Monkey Cage.
After a brief break, Physicist Brian Cox (pictured on the right with the sun shining out of his behind) and Robin Ince return for a third series of their phunny physics show which takes a “witty, irreverent look at the world according to science”. The next program will be broadcast Monday 15th November on BBC Radio 4 at 4.30pm and is available as a podcast too. Worth tuning into if you like your science comical, physical and audial.
OK, look I know that by posting the latest viral marketing video from Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. I’m just a pawn (or vector) in their advertising game. This particular video has been around for a couple of months now but it is probably poor internet hygiene to spread these pandemic viral videos. I should just catch it, kill it and bin it. However, I can’t resist this one any longer because, like the last one, it is pretty kitsch, pretty funny and in a strange way, it might just increase the public awareness of Science. Maybe.
In a curious case of mistaken identity, Google seems to think I’m Maurice Wilkins. Here is how. If you Google the words DNA and mania (google.com/search?q=dna+mania) one of the first results is a tongue-in-cheek article I wrote two years ago about our obsession with Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Now Google (or more precisely Googlebot) seems to think this article is written by one M Wilkins. That’s M Wilkins as in the physicist Maurice Wilkins, the third man of the double helix (after Watson and Crick) and Nobel prize winner back in ’62. How could such a silly (but amusing) mistake be made? Because the article is about what Wilkins once said, but not actually by Wilkins. Computers can’t tell the difference between these two things. Consequently, it has been known for some time that Google Scholar has many other mistaken identities for authors like this. Scholar even thinks there is an author called Professor Forgotten Password (a prolific author who has been widely cited in many fields)!
The other curiosity is this, the original post on nodalpoint.org is also counted as a citation in Google Scholar too. It’s a bit of a mystery how scholar actually works, what it includes (and excludes) and how big it is, but you’ll find the article counted as a proper citation for a book about genes. Scientific spammers must be licking their lips with the opportunity to influence results and citation counts, with humble blog posts, rather than more kosher articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
So what does this all this curious interweb mischief tell us?
Googlebot needs to have its algowithms tweaked by those Google Scholars at the Googleplex. Not really surprising, what else did you expect from Beta software? (P.S. Googlebot, when you read this, I’m not Maurice Wilkins, that’s not my name. I haven’t won a Nobel prize either. I’m sort of flattered that you’ve mistaken me for such a distinguished scientist, so I’ll enjoy my alternative identity while it lasts.)
Blogs are increasingly part of the scientific conversation, counted in various bibliometrics, will Google Scholar (and the rest) start indexing other blogs too? Where will this trend leave more conventional bibliometrics like the impact factor?
(Note: These search results were correct at the time of writing, but may change over time, results preserved for posterity on flickr)
Neil R. Smalheiser and Vetle I. Torvik Author Name Disambiguation (This is a preprint version of a chapter published in Volume 43 (2009) of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) (B. Cronin, Ed.) which is available from the publisher Information Today, Inc (http://books.infotoday.com/asist/#arist).
This amusing picture-parody of the semantic web is worth a thousand words, was conceived of by Mark Butler for a presentation [1] and drawn by Rachel Murphy of Rude Girl Designs.
If you took an infinite number of Professors, added some comedians, recording studios (instead of typewriters) and got them to record random radio shows you might just end up with a program like the Infinite Monkey Cage.
O'Really? 