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Boffins don't give a sh!t, slap Trump's face on a turd in science journal
A pair of boffins are in hot water after the image of President Donald Trump made an unexpected cameo in a paper on how to gather animal DNA from their poop at scale.
The paper [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-20427-9] [DX], which was published in Nature Scientific Reports, discusses the difficulties of gaining high-quality DNA samples from wild animals in a non-invasive way. Feces is the obvious option, but it is dominated by DNA from other organisms, such as bacteria – so the authors proposed a way to enrich the desired animal's DNA from the sample.
However, the pair also buried an Easter egg in a figure depicting the method, which shows a baboon sitting next to an average-sized turd. And on that turd, is a tiny image of the leader of the free world.
[...] Here's a close-up of the image in question:
— Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) December 17, 2018
[...] "The editors have become aware of unusual aspects to the 'Extract fecal DNA' illustration in figure 1. We are investigating, and appropriate editorial action will be taken once the matter is resolved," a note said.
Here is the graphic referenced:
Figure 1: | Scientific Reports
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 18 2018, @07:17PM (4 children)
This in no way impacts the quality or value of this scientific report, and is basically unnoticeable until pointed out. Why in the fucking hell does it matter?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @07:23PM
Duh, it doesn't, but what else are we going to talk about on the internet?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday December 18 2018, @08:03PM (1 child)
One word: Publicity.
I'll bet this will increase the number of reads of this paper a thousand fold.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @01:15AM
Not to mention Citations.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday December 19 2018, @03:48AM
Cuz it made fun of fearless leader. One with such thin skin that he believes satire against a public official "can't be legal?". Look at all the conservatives and Trumpettes around here. They want these scientists to actually suffer because they dared to create satire against a Republican president.
For all their bandying about with the term snowflake, they sure are some snowflakes the moment anything upsets the little one in office. Also hypocrites that defend Gab and the Daily Stormer's right to existence via free speech and rant against deplatforming, while simultaneously wishing pain and destruction on scientists who dared to enjoy free, but undesirable (to them) speech.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.