Using @georgeburdell suggestion below of: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nn202625c we need an extensive study of crap grown on crap. 2x2, deuce on deuce. Bull, horse, chicken, swine, goat, sheep, sewer trout. Patty, nugget, loaf, steamer, log, and gravy configurations also need to be explored. Possibly also naturally sourced, like swimming pools, and the River Thames.
I guess they were trying for an IgNobel Prize? However, they don't report anything on the stability of the catalyst under reaction conditions, that is how many reaction cycles it goes through before losing catalytic effect.
If they don't report the lifetime, it's usually because the lifetime is crap, and all they have is a laboratory curiousity - which might, with futher diligent effort (and please, another research grant!), become industrially useful... maybe.
There isn't any difference between the guano graphene and the non-guano graphene in terms of structure -- look at figures 1 and 2. Figure 2A is clearly 4 of the same spectra because thermal exfoliation in the presence of guano doesn't create a materially different graphene than not in the presence of guano.
The rest of the paper is poking fun at all of the referenced papers that just have inconsistent electrochemical experimental setups that produce apparently increased electrocatalytic effects.
> We demonstrate
in the following text the meaninglessness of the never-ending
co-doping of graphene. We decided to follow the hyperbole of
ever multiplying dopants; however, instead of using expensive
and toxic chemicals such as ammonia, fluorine, chlorine,
boranes, etc., we took a page from the pre-Haber−Bosch era
and sought natural materials for the fertilization of graphene
and used guano as a dopant.
What a wonderfully bat-shit paper.
> In summary, we demonstrated that bird dropping-treated
graphenes indeed make graphene more electrocatalytic than
nondoped graphene.
> the salmon was shown images of people in social situations, either socially inclusive situations or socially exclusive situations. The salmon was asked to respond, saying how the person in the situation must be feeling. The salmon, as far as I can tell from the paper, did not comply with instructions.
- "...societal impact not only in clean energy production and a cleaner environment but also on rural economies as guano once again becomes a valuable and highly sought-after product."
Apropos of nothing, the Guano Islands Act of 1856 is still, apparently, standing US law [0]. This research is an exciting opportunity for any who'd like to serve as mercenary privateers under the flag of the United States, while advancing science.
> New Atlantis was a micronation formed by Leicester Hemingway, the brother of Ernest Hemingway. The "island", a 240 sq ft (22 m²) bamboo raft off the coast of Jamaica, was established as a constitutional republic on July 4, 1964.
My grandfather somehow assisted Hemingway in setting up New Atlantis and the documents declaring him and my grandmother Sir and Lady hang proudly in my living room. As far as I know my family is the sole remaining royal line of New Atlantis. Hilarious that this keeps coming up.
Say if you wanted to issue passports for New Atlantis, how do you go about doing that, is there some passport production machine that is purchasable off the shelf?
I can't say this has topic has come up in any recent New Atlantean Royal Council meetings but we would welcome you to make a presentation on the matter.
My family actually claimed Howland island back in the early days of the guano act (they pivoted from clipper shipyards to guano shityards when international trade collapsed at the beginning of the civil war) [1]. I’d love to go there and, you know, live out my dreams, but WOW is transportation an issue. That place is FAR away.
Also, check out the super secret spy base on the west side of the island, loosely hidden by google maps treachery. What’s happening there?? [2]
There's "everything is always underwater" rise, whichbis 1600 years off. Then there's "average highwater mark during a storm at high tide", which will exceed those 6m a lot sooner and is the point at which the island ceases to become at all inhabitable.
I was actually worried for a second, then checked my last 10 comments and realized this is just the equivalent of "well your face is ugly" playground style insults, but for adults. Got me for a second though.
Not wanting to ruin a good joke, is this because imperfections in the alignment of otherwise pure substances provide opportunistic "holes" in structure for things like van der waals forces to work their magic?
I am reminded of the "you can develop photos with a banana and a spoon" (not really) stories, which underline the fundamentals of what photographic development is: a chemistry story which is not about the substances as much as about how base and acids combine. The photoreactive chemicals are highly specific, but the process of fixing them, and binding visible molecules to them or not, is more general.
Maybe the role of "contaminants" in graphine is similar? Not what it is, but what it DOES.
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).
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) 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.
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
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!".
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.
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.
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.
I’ve heard it said that journal article titles tend to be less entertaining and whimsical than they used to be (perhaps due to increased pressure to conform to a standard style?). I’m glad to see a counterexample here though!
