3 ms·

Love the title!

• amelius 2y ago
  I don't. Science already has a credibility problem, and click-baity titles only make it worse.
  • lanternfish 2y ago
    On the other hand, the sanitized titles of scientific discourse can mask uncredibility and obscure the actual core thrust of a piece.
  • blegr 2y ago
    As 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 2y ago
      Actually, “clickbait” doesn’t really apply here, the paper supports the title.
      • SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
        They tested bird crap, but not other sorts if crap. And which birds? Does species matter?
  • nottorp 2y ago
    That 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!".
    • mindcrime 2y ago
      That or "STOP putting THIS into Graphene now!!!"
      • luqtas 2y ago
        plzzz like & subscribe *-*
  • mort96 2y ago
    Has the word click-bait lost all its meaning now
    • gorjusborg 2y ago
      No. It now means 'content that offends my refined sensibilities'. (But I'm with you, words matter, and I loved your comment).
  • atoav 2y ago
    And 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 2y ago
    Cannot 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 2y ago
      Do 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 2y ago
        Yes 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 2y ago
        Would feces-doped graphene have gathered attention on HN? I dare say "yes"!
    • araes 2y ago
      The 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 2y ago
    If 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 2y ago
  Czechs trying to be funny...
  • stavros 2y ago
    Funniness check passed!