Scientists Get Their Groove On On YouTube

merg717 writes "Six weeks ago, the Gonzo Scientist challenged researchers around the world to interpret their Ph.D. research in dance form, film the dance, and share it with the world on YouTube (Science, 10 October, p. 186). By the 11 p.m. deadline this past Sunday, 36 dances — including solo ballet and circus spectacle — had been submitted online." The vitamin D dance is particularly strange.

Brings About a Smile

Beautiful.

Makes me want to go down to the capital with a sign saying:

Less Invasions, More Equations

Re:

Only because you're not the one being invaded, nor the one actually doing it.

Experiment

What the researchers didn't know was that this was an experiment in itself. The question the experiment aimed to answer was "Do researchers have too much free time, and do they waste time which is paid for using taxpayers money?"

The full paper will be published in Scientific America once it has completed peer review.

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Except they did it on their own personal free time, outside of work hours, thereby mooting your point. Had they been Federal government researchers, your point would stand!

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It was a joke.

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The full paper will be published in Scientific America once it has completed peer review.

You've never actually read Scientific American have you?

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If it is going to be peer reviewed, I doubt they'd publish it in Scientific America... Though a quick review for spelling mistakes could get it published there...

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You know you don't automatically lose those qualities by becoming a PHD?

Idle

Why is an idle story filed under science?

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Contamination. This way if Idle is a failure, they can still spam all the other sections with Idle crap. Everbody loses that way but /. doesn't care.

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I, for one, welcome our new dancing scientists overlords

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Eh.

Fun does not necessarily mean "relegated to idle".

I like my Slashdot to be varied.

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More to the point, why can't I block kdawson stories from the front page since I agreed to test the new index2.pl? Or revert back to the original, where I could.

wtf.

well, part of me thinks its a bit of fun (like the IgNobels), it raises the awareness of their research and - quite frankly - anything that makes Engineering and Science look like a more attractive offering is fine by me as we need to increase the headcount.

but...

the other part of me thinks. what. the. fuck? these people fought hard for their funding and are doing dance?

Re:wtf.

Maybe they just wanted to have fun, and didn't think anything more of it. Just a little bit of "hey, let's behave like molecules, it'll be pretty funny".

I doubt any one of them HAD to do it. And I doubt any one of them was trying to advance their career. Did I miss out on any detail in the article? I honestly think they don't care one way or the other. And I honestly think they got a kick out of it.

Break down the stereotypes!

I find it interesting that science based Phd students are able to be this creative - they are dealing with very intangible things, and correlating them to a form of communication that they are traditionally not known to be able to identify with. I am not sure sure how I would equate dance to my line of work, so more power to them!

Re:Break down the stereotypes!

I find it interesting that science based Phd students are able to be this creative - they are dealing with very intangible things, and correlating them to a form of communication that they are traditionally not known to be able to identify with.

Not known by whom? You? The popular media?

I'm a graybeard (literally) sick of this stereotype.

FYI - Dweebs exist in EVERY discipline - and they are better suited as the outlyers, not the norm, for their disciplines. /. is rife with science and engineering types - but just look at the post counts for any topic dealing with: music, DRM, films and YRO. That is more than merely anecdotal, it speaks clearly to the developed mind being whole, ready to embrace all that life offers.

I've worked in science and engineering most of my life. Creativity is not the exception - it is the norm. Introspection is a strict requirement for the creative mind - it is denigrated as introversion. Excitement and a need to express excitement over complex work is denigrated as yet another computer-wearing-tennis-shoes running his mouth without social skills. I say that the non-receptive audience is the grown-up from not-paying-attention-in-school crowd. My wife is a well-known and accomplished artist - as are her friends. Her friends and mine never have trouble getting along, relating, or enjoying fun things - be it art, dance, music - or high tech toys and scientific concepts. The creative mind seeks its own kind, not its own narrow expression of specialization.

The mind of a scientific researcher lives in a fine balance - on one side, beyond the fringe thinking, the only true way NEW ideas are born - on the other side, strict conservatism, the only way crackpotism is avoided.

Mathematics is the language of science. Everyone here with a hard science degree knows that each semester there were fewer and fewer students in the theoretical math classes - the language is not accessible to everyone. JS Bach was quite a mathist - and purposely expressed his music as such. From what I know, Miles Davis was not so - but his music contains math anyway. The point of that? Math is the language of science - and science is the outcome of the mind of humankind trying to understand the universe.

The stars dance. Molecules dance. Quarks dance. Dogs dance. DNA dances. Why shouldn't the very people who work the hardest to understand those dances not dance themselves?

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I find it interesting that science based Phd students are able to be this creative - they are dealing with very intangible things, and correlating them to a form of communication that they are traditionally not known to be able to identify with.

In my experience, the association of the "hard" sciences and math with music and dance is well known, and qualifies as a stereotype. Since my college years as a math and CS student, I've been involved in music and dance, both classical and various "folk" varieties.

Prior Art!

This reminds me of the old Protein Synthesis Dance [youtube.com].

"All mimsy was mRNA, and Protein chain outgrabe..."

My Dance

It would have been simply an inter-tribal pow wow dance, but I would have been laughing and yelling "We told you so! For 500 years we told you it was medicinal! Are you going to listen now?"

Unfortunately I didn't make the deadline. On the other hand, none of those on YouTube had their work on the Big Screen: "Why, they just found that smoking can offset Parkinson's disease." -- 'Thank You For Smoking'

There was only one casualty

Luckily for eveyone they didn't mention the poor mathematician who tried to reproduce the Banach-Tarski paradox on stage and disintegrated, while "Just the two of us" was playing in the background.

I'm glad this wasn't around in 2000

The dance after my PhD odyssey would have been a drunken stumble to the tune of "The Road Goes On Forever". And I would have had to use a walker.

ARG!

Look at what those Liberal Arts bastards are doing to Science! Shoo Shoo! Out of the lab, all of you, stop sniffing those chemicals, put that down! If one more of you even suggests that gravity is just the man keeping us down I will kill each and every one of you!

Oh...

...the humanity.

rj

Ritual dance

Having had a couple years of getting my ass kicked in karate and kung fu classes, I've always wondered how some of the more ritualized exercises came to be. There are katas that seem completely bizarre and that would leave oneself open to injury both from the opponent and from the physical contortions required to perform them. But maybe some ancient master realized that the easiest way to remember certain moves was to attach it to a mnemonic.

It is quite effective to use physical and mental cues to recall a