Glossary letters J-M

Machiavelli's Laboratory is a free ebook that I published on April 13, 2010. It is a satiric discourse on scientific ethics, from the perspective of an unethical scientist. Please don't take any of the advice and opinions in the book (or the excerpts featured in this blog) seriously. The ebook has been downloaded well over 10,000 times since its publication. This blog site features excerpts from the book and provides a forum for readers who would like to comment publicly.

GLOSSARY (letters J-M)

Journal article - The following warnings apply to every scientific manuscript you will ever read: 1) the paper may have been written by a ghost writer, with the listed authors as shills, prostituting their reputations for a consultation fee, 2) the listed authors may have undisclosed conflicts of interest, of a financial nature, 3) in the case of clinical trials, the study may have violated the rights of human subjects, 4) the conclusions may be based on falsified or fabricated data, 5) you will never have access to the raw primary data upon which the conclusions were based, 6) the discussion section is a subtle misrepresentation of the conclusions, designed to promote the selfish agenda of the primary author, 7) the references omit important precedent works published by competitors, and all relevant valid works whose conclusions oppose the conclusions promoted in the article, 8) the paper was accepted for publication only because it confirmed the biases held by the reviewers, 9) the research was probably submitted one to two years prior to the publication date and currently has negligible value, 10) the article may have appeared in another place and another time, in another language, with a different title and conclusion, 11) you are the only person on the planet who has bothered to read the published manuscript.

Laputa - From Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Laputa is a flying island. The island is populated by over-educated theorists, who spend their lives in deep thought (316). A Laputan field of science is one in which new discoveries never yield any practical benefit. The scientists in the field are constantly startling one another, with observations and measurements of no apparent utility. Examples of Laputan efforts might include: alchemy, the design of perpetual motion machines, automobiles built as hovercrafts, jet back-packs that fly individuals from place to place, computers that predict sociological events such as wars and insurgencies, the strategic defense initiative. The jury is still out on some of the big, well-funded research projects of today, some of which have persisted for decades without much benefit to society: the human genome project, the cancer genome anatomy project, personalized pharmacogenomics, medical nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, gene therapy for common diseases, manned space missions including the space shuttle project, and human-manufactured nuclear fusion as a practical energy source.

License - A license is an agreement from a lawgiver or a copyright holder or a patent holder or an owner indicating that the restrictions that apply to everyone else (by virtue of a law, copyright, patent or right of ownership) will not apply to you. For example, if you have a license to use a patented process, that means that the normal rights of the patent holder will be suspended for you, in the manner specified in the license.

Menuese - Rhymes with Gouda Cheese. Menuese is the international language of science. If you can't read and speak fluent Menuese, your scientific career is ruined. Usage: "Menuese" is used in the following verse, "The Doctor ignores you when you wheeze; he's planning lunch in Menuese."

Merton's Hypothesis - From Robert K. Merton (1910 - 2003), who held that scientific discoveries come from multiple contributors (67).

MIA (Missing In Action) - A scientist is missing in action when he is present at work, for the purposes of collecting his salary, but nobody knows his whereabouts. If you call the office of an MIA scientist, the receptionist will inform you that he "has stepped out," or "has not been seen in the office", but nobody knows where he is. When pressed, they might volunteer that he "is somewhere," hoping that this information will suffice. In all cases, you will be invited to leave a message on his answering machine, send him an email, or, if you insist, leave a message with the receptionist. They will not volunteer to arrange an appointment with the MIA, because they do not know that you are appointment-worthy. In my experience, most scientists, particularly academics, are MIA more often than not. Where are academics when they are MIA? More than likely, they are at home, transporting children to scheduled events, shopping, indulging in a discrete sexual interlude, intoxicated, looking for another job, receiving medical services, engaging in private consulting, fulfilling the obligations of a second full-time job, or just sitting in their office and refusing to accept calls. The beauty about being MIA is that you collect your salary, without actually earning your salary.

Middleware - "Middleware is the intersection of the stuff that network engineers don't want to do with the stuff that applications developers don't want to do," Kenneth J. Klingenstein.

Moral flexibility - The ability to find a moral justification for an action, no matter how unethical.

Moral relativity - The idea that an immoral act is venial (forgivable after some limited punishment) if it is less immoral that some other immoral act.

Multi-author paper - A single journal article may have dozens or even hundreds of assigned authors. One of the most cherished absurdities in science is the notion that a journal article can be written by multiple authors.

Multi-tasking - The ability to do several things at once. What is commonly called multi-tasking is a euphemism for flightiness: the inefficient habit of hopping around from one unfinished task to another, without much to show for the effort. The multi-tasking mystique has several advantages for powerful scientists: it provides the illusion of productivity, and it allows the powerful scientist to abandon tasks that require sustained, intensive, and uninterrupted effort.


- © 2010 Jules Berman