Friday, January 15, 2016
Thanks, Ralph 21 (cowshit edition)
News from WSU:
WSU ... discovered Assistant Professor Dr. Craig Frear made up his data showing ways to convert cow feces into electric power. Frear claimed the wind blew a notebook full of his original findings into a manure pit and his backup data was overwritten by his computer, so he could not prove his numbers were factual.The cowshit ate my homework?
... Frear happened to be the CEO of a company called BEST that he started in 2005, one year before he started gathering his data. BEST was financially tied to companies who designed anaerobic digesters which helped convert cow manure into energy. Frear told the committee the company never earned any money from the research.Here's the Emersonian part:
The investigation found the company most likely did not earn any money because it was 30 percent under efficiency required for commercial sale. Committee leaders said that is about how much he fabricated his numbers by.You can fool journal editors but you can't fool Nature. Bacteria don't give a shit about your fake numbers. Grammar note: The last sentence of the quoted article is an EXTREMELY RARE example of a sentence that truly shouldn't end with a little word. Nearly all "corrections" for this "rule" make a sentence worse, but this sentence really does need to be redone. Something like "Committee leaders said that his bad data raised the supposed efficiency by 30 percent, making it appear adequate." Tech note: If Frear was actually using a blowable looseleaf notebook while working outside with icky stuff, somebody would have stopped him. In 2005 you'd specify an industrial-grade waterproof laptop. The grantor would expect to pay for it, and would question your competence if you didn't specify it. In earlier times you'd use a notebook with waterproof paper. Standard procedure.
Labels: Emersonian justice, Language update
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