Wissenschaftler sind rational, distanziert, eigenbrötlerisch und exzentrische Workaholics die sich gern in ihren Elfenbeinturm zurückziehen, wenn die ganze Welt feiert. Es ist schwer mit ihnen warm zu werden  – so das Klischee. Aber mal ehrlich, welcher Student/welche Studentin war schon mit seinem/ihrem Professor auf ein Bier? Umso erstaunter ist der Laie, wenn er erfährt, dass so mancher Prof. Unrat Gedichte schreibt in denen er seine persönlichen Gefühle ausdrückt. Wenn das Gedicht dann noch von seiner Arbeit handelt, bringt es ihm doppelten Nutzen: Er zeigt seine, bisher unbekannte, persönliche Seite und eröffnet dem Laien einen neuen Zugang zu seiner Forschung. Mich würde es nicht wundern, wenn demnächst Nachbarblogger, Musenfreund und Sprachvirtuose Helmut Wicht von Anatomisches Allerlei auf SciLogs etwas Poetisches zum Besten bringt 😉 Und wem der Science Slam nicht gefällt, der muss sich bis dahin mit folgendem tragikomischen Kleinod von zwei Doktoranden der Mikrobiologie begnügen:

The Trouble with Coauthors¹

Jon L. DiPippo^*† and Kristen S. Swithers^*†
 
*These authors contributed equally to this poem.
^† Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, 06269, U.S.A.

I’m not sure exactly
how I came to be where I am,
number eight among eleven authors
of a paper that has been called elegant and groundbreaking
by a distinguished commentator
not associated with the work.

Of course, number eleven is the senior author
and they always come last.
I have never seen numbers nine and ten.
They are affiliated with several prominent research institutions
and must have done something.

I, at number eight,
chose various and appropriate statistical methods
and used them responsibly to analyze our data,
which were rather irregular and quite surprising.
All of which is fully explained by number seven.

It’s not important really,
but I think I might have contributed more
than authors five and six,
who constructed some trees
with rather low bootstrap support.

That would put me at number four,
tied with a highly motivated undergraduate
who ran gels, extracted DNA,
and washed all the lab’s glassware.

Her research experience
and prominent placement in the author list
of our well received paper
should help her chances of gaining admission
to at least one prestigious veterinary school.

I don’t know about author number three.
He is quite skilled in sundry techniques
of mutagenesis, cloning, and primer design.
But for him, our work was a mere side project,
a diversion from his other pursuits and interests.

Numbers one and two belong where they are,
for this paper is the intellectual fruit
of their well-conceived project.
The accumulation of their good ideas and hard won data.

They worked long hours together
conducting many tedious experiments,
repeating things and designing novel controls,
some of which will almost surely become standard in the field.

They remained quite friendly despite a plethora of setbacks.
But the quiet struggle to be number one,
to be spared the graveyard anonymity,
the coldness that comes with being among the et al.,
finally destroyed their camaraderie.

After days of respectfully arguing over whose ideas
were most vital to the project’s success,
they finally settled for an alphabetical solution
and an asterisk, which, in fine print at the bottom of page one,
indicates their equal contribution
to the present work.

I thank Kristen S. Swithers and Jon L. DiPippo for the permission to publish their poem.