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Will any crap we put into graphene increase its electrocatalytic effect? (2020)
- due-rr 3y agoLove the title!
- amelius 3y agoI don't. Science already has a credibility problem, and click-baity titles only make it worse.
- lanternfish 3y agoOn the other hand, the sanitized titles of scientific discourse can mask uncredibility and obscure the actual core thrust of a piece.
- blegr 3y agoAs opposed to inscrutable two-line titles full of the field’s buzzwords on top of papers that you have to parse for hours to realize the idea and results could have been written in one sentence? Maybe I’ve read too many applied machine learning papers. As long as the funny title isn’t dishonest, I’m all for it.
- blegr 3y agoActually, “clickbait” doesn’t really apply here, the paper supports the title.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoThey tested bird crap, but not other sorts if crap. And which birds? Does species matter?
- nottorp 3y agoThat is actually a humorous title. Note that the title accurately describes what the article is about. As opposed to clickbait. Clickbait would have been "You would never believe what we put into graphene!".
- mort96 3y agoHas the word click-bait lost all its meaning now
- gorjusborg 3y agoNo. It now means 'content that offends my refined sensibilities'. (But I'm with you, words matter, and I loved your comment).
- atoav 3y agoAnd there we got the problem, a papers title not sounding serious doesn't mean it isn't — and more importantly: the opposite is true as well. The credibility problems science has is because instead of replicating the contents of a paper people have seveloped and over-reliance on other peripheral metrics like which papers it has been published in, p-values and such. Relying on the seriousness of titles is just another of those distractions.
- xandrius 3y agoCannot be clickbaity if the title precisely explains what the paper is about. The problem with science dissemination is not that it's too accessible but rather the polar opposite: even experts find reading some (many? Most?) papers truly dreadful because of the terse and dryness but one does it for the knowledge; on the other hand everyone else absolutely needs to rely on "science popularisers" to even half-understand half of what a paper is about. And that's the problem: the general scientific understanding is as good as the scientific rigor of the most understandable/entertaining science populariser out there. To clarify: if person A is extremely diligent and precise but not too enjoyable to watch, they will get X views and maybe a limited (but positive) impact, on the other hand person B is not very diligent, cuts corners or even outright lies but is very easy and fun to watch, they reach N more people than person A, having an absolute huge (albeit negative) impact. If the authors had a way to write both for experts and, somehow, have control on how that knowledge is available to the rest, the delta between the two methods of dissemination would be minimal (or at least controlled).
- amelius 3y agoDo you think this paper would be on HN if it had a regular kind of title? At this point, there are more comments about the title than about its contents.
- passwordoops 3y agoYes it would have. And the problem with science dissemination isn't click-baity titles, it's a combination of poorly executed science (hence the reproducibility and retraction crisis in many field), the abject, shameless hyperbole spewed by PR departments, and a lack of genuine scientific education
- naasking 3y agoWould feces-doped graphene have gathered attention on HN? I dare say "yes"!
- araes 3y agoThe title appears to work in the context of ACS Nano. Has 200+ citations, and cited by several other 200+ papers. Maybe double the average ACS Nano citations of 87 (Exaly says 1.5 million citations on 17,200 papers https://exaly.com/journal/12906/acs-nano https://exaly.com/journal/12906/acs-nano) If other authors found it click baity, they found it click bait in a way that deserved inclusion in their own work above the norm of ACS Nano.
- Maken 3y agoIf the paper is accurate, it's actilly making fun of all the serious-sounding papers adding whatever to graphene and publishing it as noteworthy results. After reading way more papers that I wish I had to, I can say I would prefer if all paper titles were this accessible and honest.
- meltea 3y agoCzechs trying to be funny...
- stavros 3y agoFunniness check passed!
- Terr_ 3y ago> We demonstrate in the following text the meaninglessness of the never-ending co-doping of graphene. We decided to follow the hyperbole of ever multiplying dopants; however, instead of using expensive and toxic chemicals such as ammonia, fluorine, chlorine, boranes, etc., we took a page from the pre-Haber−Bosch era and sought natural materials for the fertilization of graphene and used guano as a dopant. What a wonderfully bat-shit paper. > In summary, we demonstrated that bird dropping-treated graphenes indeed make graphene more electrocatalytic than nondoped graphene. Oh, never mind, just bird-shit, dang.
- jon_richards 3y agoReminds me of the salmon study https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/scicurious-brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/scicurious-brain/ign... > the salmon was shown images of people in social situations, either socially inclusive situations or socially exclusive situations. The salmon was asked to respond, saying how the person in the situation must be feeling. The salmon, as far as I can tell from the paper, did not comply with instructions.
- joatmon-snoo 3y agoThat’s a fabulous one. Thanks for sharing.
- perihelions 3y ago- "...societal impact not only in clean energy production and a cleaner environment but also on rural economies as guano once again becomes a valuable and highly sought-after product." Apropos of nothing, the Guano Islands Act of 1856 is still, apparently, standing US law [0]. This research is an exciting opportunity for any who'd like to serve as mercenary privateers under the flag of the United States, while advancing science. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act
- throwup238 3y agoAre there any unclaimed islands left? Sadly this wouldn’t apply to new islands since it takes a long time for bats to establish themselves.
- dr_dshiv 3y agoMy family actually claimed Howland island back in the early days of the guano act (they pivoted from clipper shipyards to guano shityards when international trade collapsed at the beginning of the civil war) [1]. I’d love to go there and, you know, live out my dreams, but WOW is transportation an issue. That place is FAR away. Also, check out the super secret spy base on the west side of the island, loosely hidden by google maps treachery. What’s happening there?? [2] [1] http://christophersetterlund.blogspot.com/2020/05/in-their-footsteps-cape-cod-history.html?m=1 http://christophersetterlund.blogspot.com/2020/05/in-their-f... [2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ly8W9M2fqdap7Mzc7?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ly8W9M2fqdap7Mzc7?g_st=ic
- georgeburdell 3y agoRelated: graphene grown from crap https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nn202625c https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nn202625c
- photochemsyn 3y agoI guess they were trying for an IgNobel Prize? However, they don't report anything on the stability of the catalyst under reaction conditions, that is how many reaction cycles it goes through before losing catalytic effect. If they don't report the lifetime, it's usually because the lifetime is crap, and all they have is a laboratory curiousity - which might, with futher diligent effort (and please, another research grant!), become industrially useful... maybe.
- VygmraMGVl 3y agoThere isn't any difference between the guano graphene and the non-guano graphene in terms of structure -- look at figures 1 and 2. Figure 2A is clearly 4 of the same spectra because thermal exfoliation in the presence of guano doesn't create a materially different graphene than not in the presence of guano. The rest of the paper is poking fun at all of the referenced papers that just have inconsistent electrochemical experimental setups that produce apparently increased electrocatalytic effects.
- pfdietz 3y agoThe paper did not answer the question in the title, since it used only one kind of crap. A broader study is called for.
- araes 3y agoUsing @georgeburdell suggestion below of: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nn202625c https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nn202625c we need an extensive study of crap grown on crap. 2x2, deuce on deuce. Bull, horse, chicken, swine, goat, sheep, sewer trout. Patty, nugget, loaf, steamer, log, and gravy configurations also need to be explored. Possibly also naturally sourced, like swimming pools, and the River Thames.
- naasking 3y agoThe age deucine has begun!
- MisterDizzy 3y agoI adore that I live in a time where scientific articles have headlines with the word "crap".
- xanderlewis 3y agoI’ve heard it said that journal article titles tend to be less entertaining and whimsical than they used to be (perhaps due to increased pressure to conform to a standard style?). I’m glad to see a counterexample here though!
- ethbr1 3y agoI feel like these authors read a lot of Derek Lowe. The style of humor seems very similar.
- atomicbeanie 3y agoWith text that continues with serious consideration of guano-doped graphene... Graphine chemistry has a meme!
- ggm 3y agoNot wanting to ruin a good joke, is this because imperfections in the alignment of otherwise pure substances provide opportunistic "holes" in structure for things like van der waals forces to work their magic? I am reminded of the "you can develop photos with a banana and a spoon" (not really) stories, which underline the fundamentals of what photographic development is: a chemistry story which is not about the substances as much as about how base and acids combine. The photoreactive chemicals are highly specific, but the process of fixing them, and binding visible molecules to them or not, is more general. Maybe the role of "contaminants" in graphine is similar? Not what it is, but what it DOES.