Tumblr Thread: Stupid But Widely Accepted Scientific Terminology

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Eric Lund
Oct 27, 2021 11:00 AM EDT

Scientists are people. And being people, they don't take their work as seriously as they maybe should. So naturally, we get things like extremely important primate language studies conducted by people who name their chimp "Nim Chimpsky." Hey, as long as the research is good. Here's a tumblr thread about the use of lucky shrines in the field of science.

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  • 01
    Font - f..ingflying I hate linguistic anthropology. Why? One of the most influential experiments in linguistic anthropology involved teaching a chimp asl. One of the most influential linguistics is named Noam Chomsky. You know what the chimp's name was? Nim Chimpsky.
    via piconuke
  • 02
    Font - Fking monkey pun. And this is in textbooks, in documentaries, everywhere. And everyone just IGNORES THIS GOD AWFUL PUN cause of how important the experiment was. But BUT LOOK AT THIS S. .„T. FKING NIM CHIMPSKY. I HATE THIS WHOLE FIELD.
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  • 03
    Font - dendritic-trees Its not just the linguistic anthropologists. There's a group of very important genes that determine if your body develops in the right shape/organization. they are called the hedgehog genes, because fruit fly geneticists are all ridiculous. The different hedgehog genes are all named after different hedgehogs. And then someone decided to get clever and name one "sonic hedgehog" because this is just what fruitfly geneticists do.
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  • 04
    Font - Well sonic hedgehog controls brain development, and now actual doctors are stuck in the position of explaining to grieving parents that their child's lethal birth defects or life-threatening tumors are caused by a "sonic hedgehog mutation". And this is why no one will invite the fruit fly people to parties.
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  • 05
    Font - error-404- k-not-found Biogeochemical scientists, upon discovering the complex mechanisms that govern the storage and use of molecular iron on our planet, decided to call this cycle "the ferrous wheel". We groaned about that for at least five solid minutes. callmegallifreya The phenomenon of sneezing when exposed to sudden bright light is called an Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio Opthalmic Outburst. ACHOO. Half a byte of data is a nibble.
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  • 06
    Font - beingcuteismything Particle physicists went out of their way to call a particle a WIMP (weakly interacting matter particle) just because its weak so now you have physicists saying stuff like "one of the candidates for dark matter are wimps" hobo-rg And then the astronomers went and named another of the more plausible explanations for dark matter "massive astrophysical compact halo objects" just so the acronym would be MACHOS. Because they're not WIMPS.
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