I think perhaps "expletive" came to have its sense as particularly referring to profanity when the transcripts of the Nixon tapes were published in the 1970s, during the Watergate affair. "Expletive deleted," the all-purpose substitution used when the transcripts would have shown Nixon using a nasty word, became a slang watchword for any implied-but-not-stated profanity.
Sorry, what you're saying is a bit misleading. While the opus that leads ultimately to a Ph.D. is formally called a dissertation, it is colloquially (and almost universally, in the program that I was in) referred to as a thesis, by people who are actually in the thick of doing it: "Christ, I'm *never* going to finish this *$&#! thesis."
Websters defines thesis (definition 4) as: "a dissertation embodying results of original research and especially substantiating a specific view; especially : one written by a candidate for an academic degree."
Kind of a pointless post, I know, but I thought I'd mention it . . . And, from an aging Ph.D. holder to an even older candidate: Hooray for you, Brian May! What a kickass (and inspiring) story. Apparently, 60 really *is* the new 30 . ..
This all comes from the 22 December issue of the journal Science, in case that wasn't clear from the original posting. All of the stories from the issue are indexed here; to get access to the articles I believe you need to register with the site. There's also a podcast, which doesn't require registration.
Re:Nice idea, bad implementation
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This is spot on. Typing a search term is *not* like typing a long URL, where a user benefits from autocomplete of terms they've typed in previously. In this case, the long list of search terms that pops down is a huge distraction and a step away from Google's famously uncluttered interface. Ask yourself: Given the length of the list that drops down, what are the odds that *any* of the terms offered will actually be the one you want to use? Pretty bloody low in most cases, I would guess.
Hope they don't add this to the main search page -- *not* useful.
This is spot on, and needs to be emphasized. The committee let the coauthors off *much* too easily. Remember that one of the issues that was raised was that the *same figures* showed up various *different* papers, often reporting results for entirely different experiments, etc. Unquestionably the papers must have been circulated among a variety of scientists at Lucent. Wasn't anybody really *reading* these papers, and thinking about them, before they were submitted?
It may go a bit far to call this "complicity in fraud"; often a coauthor's name appears on a paper because he/she contributed some small piece to the research. But clearly a few of the senior coauthors appear to have been severely negligent, or criminally lazy.
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I think perhaps "expletive" came to have its sense as particularly referring to profanity when the transcripts of the Nixon tapes were published in the 1970s, during the Watergate affair. "Expletive deleted," the all-purpose substitution used when the transcripts would have shown Nixon using a nasty word, became a slang watchword for any implied-but-not-stated profanity.
Sorry, what you're saying is a bit misleading. While the opus that leads ultimately to a Ph.D. is formally called a dissertation, it is colloquially (and almost universally, in the program that I was in) referred to as a thesis, by people who are actually in the thick of doing it: "Christ, I'm *never* going to finish this *$&#! thesis."
Websters defines thesis (definition 4) as: "a dissertation embodying results of original research and especially substantiating a specific view; especially : one written by a candidate for an academic degree."
Kind of a pointless post, I know, but I thought I'd mention it . . . And, from an aging Ph.D. holder to an even older candidate: Hooray for you, Brian May! What a kickass (and inspiring) story. Apparently, 60 really *is* the new 30 . . .
Second paragraph:
Whatever flack came up with the headline "Cancer Cure Patented" (in the press release the poster refers to) ought to be horsewhipped.
This all comes from the 22 December issue of the journal Science, in case that wasn't clear from the original posting. All of the stories from the issue are indexed here; to get access to the articles I believe you need to register with the site. There's also a podcast, which doesn't require registration.
This is spot on. Typing a search term is *not* like typing a long URL, where a user benefits from autocomplete of terms they've typed in previously. In this case, the long list of search terms that pops down is a huge distraction and a step away from Google's famously uncluttered interface. Ask yourself: Given the length of the list that drops down, what are the odds that *any* of the terms offered will actually be the one you want to use? Pretty bloody low in most cases, I would guess. Hope they don't add this to the main search page -- *not* useful.
This is spot on, and needs to be emphasized. The committee let the coauthors off *much* too easily. Remember that one of the issues that was raised was that the *same figures* showed up various *different* papers, often reporting results for entirely different experiments, etc. Unquestionably the papers must have been circulated among a variety of scientists at Lucent. Wasn't anybody really *reading* these papers, and thinking about them, before they were submitted? It may go a bit far to call this "complicity in fraud"; often a coauthor's name appears on a paper because he/she contributed some small piece to the research. But clearly a few of the senior coauthors appear to have been severely negligent, or criminally lazy.