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[Ed. note: For those who are unfamiliar or need a reminder, a quick search brought up this YouTube video.]
Scientists analyze Monty Python's silly walks, determine they are indeed silly:
The Ministry of Silly Walks set a new standard for absurdity when the comedy sketch first appeared on Monty Python's Flying Circus television show in 1970. But just exactly how silly were those walks? Extremely silly, new research suggests.
A team of scientists from Dartmouth College conducted a gait analysis on the walks performed by John Cleese (the minister) and Michael Palin (Mr. Pudey, a man applying for a grant to improve his own silly walk). The results appeared in the journal Gait & Posture.
"In the spirit of Monty Python's humor, based on an actual gait analysis, a Dartmouth research team finds that the minister's silly walk is 6.7 times more variable than a normal walk," the college said in a statement on Thursday. Mr. Pudey's walk was found to be 3.3 times more variable than a typical walk.
A chart released with the paper illustrates just how different the Pythons' walks are from a standard gait.
Monty Python's silly walk: A gait analysis and wake-up call to peer review inefficiencies:
The team points out how bureaucratic inefficiency can be likened to that of the peer-review process associated with academic research in the health sciences, particularly when applying for funding. Applying for a federal grant is extremely time consuming and can take months to prepare. An application may require a 150-page proposal followed by a review by a panel of researchers, who are often flown in for the occasion. Peer review protocols often require that the panelists must reach a consensus of 75 percent or more to approve a proposal.
By contrast, the Dartmouth team points out how the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia pioneered a streamlined grant application process in 2013, which resulted in an estimated savings in 2015 of $A2.1-$4.9 million per year.
"The peer review research process has become rather unwieldy," said Nathaniel J. Dominy, the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology, who co-authored the study with Erin E. Butler, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the Neukom Institute at Dartmouth at the time the research was conducted. "If the process was streamlined and grants were awarded more quickly, researchers could start their work earlier, accelerating the timeline for research. Similarly, grant administrators would recoup time and money, which could potentially free up more money for research funding," explained Dominy.
Journal Reference:
Erin E Butler, Nathaniel J Dominy. Peer review at the Ministry of Silly Walks[$. Gait & Posture, 2020; (DOI: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2020.02.019)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @04:46AM (2 children)
A 2nd year PhD student who 2nd language is English (no prize for guessing the 1st language but it rhymes with Chinese) comes to me with a question. He's been asked to review to an article and accepted but doesn''t understand it. I stopped reviewing about a year ago because my reviews kept getting overruled since they were at odds with the other reviewer(s). The light bulh goes off in my head. What advice do you give this student, reviewing the work of people with 10-15 years more experience and talent?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @07:52AM (1 child)
"Stop reviewing papers until you've tried to publish some more"
who they are doesn't matter, only their presenting symptoms. They don't get it? Adversarial system it until they do.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:31AM
Who are you talking to? The horse has bolted. These "reviewers" are out in the wild. There are a lot of them and they are changing the direction of entire fields. Quality has gone to shit while quantity has gone up. Departments are full of pontificating authoritarians who can't tie their shoelaces but can definitely fuck your bitch. Your bitch being your career.