1847: Dubious Study

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Dubious Study

Title text: Sounds fine. I looked up the Academy, and it says on their MySpace page that their journal is peer-viewed and downloaded biannually.

Explanation

This comic alludes to the growing industry in disreputable academic journals, many of whom adopt names that sound mistakably close to established titles. Here, the National Academy of Proceedings is a pun on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Transcript

Megan is standing behind Cueball who is at a computer desk.

Megan: Are you sure this study is legit?

Cueball: Sure, it says it was accepted for publication.

Megan: Where?

Cueball: Hmm...the national academy of proceedings.

Caption: If something is if formatted like a serious scientific paper, it can take me a while to realize it isn't one.

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Discussion

The name of the organisation is suggestive of legitimacy but rather vague. That would be a red flag for me. 108.162.245.166 06:01, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

"downloaded bi-annually" is misleadingly close to "released bi-annually" --JakubNarebski (talk) 07:03, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

but I would understand it as if the Journal was only downloaded twice within a year, i.e. only two people have downloaded (and maybe read) the Journal so far. 162.158.92.118 08:24, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

The National Academy of Proceedings sounds more like a legal document collection than a scientific journal to me. TheSandromatic (talk) 07:21, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Although biannual conventionally means twice a year, its conflation with biennial (once every two years) is quite common. It would not be unthinkable that this confusion was intentional. ~~108.162.246.71, 15:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I would only think the confusion was intentional if it was the other way around. If Randall had used "biennially", I could believe the idea was to let people think it was "biannual" - twice a year - but it's even more pathetic, only every two years. To fit in with the rest (letting people read "peer-viewed" as "peer-reviewed" for example) :) - NiceGuy1 108.162.219.64 03:23, 9 June 2017 (UTC) I finally signed up! This comment is mine. NiceGuy1 (talk) 06:34, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

What size should the references be? 6 pixels is far too small. 141.101.107.150 11:08, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

When I saw it yesterday I could ALMOST read it, but I did end up having to zoom in. It's definitely bigger now, I say it's good now. It's bordering on too big for the gag. :) - NiceGuy1 108.162.219.64 03:23, 9 June 2017 (UTC) Also my comment! NiceGuy1 (talk) 06:40, 13 June 2017 (UTC)