Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 July 25

= July 25 =

Metre
Here is part of a poem I wrote. I seem to write most poems in this metre. I would like to know what type of metre it is. KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 ) ( Chin Wag )  02:07, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We slip into the office
 * And I carefully choose my seat,
 * Another bloody meeting
 * In the awful office heat.
 * I have no idea what it's called (and Metre (poetry) didn't totally work for me, but it might make sense to you), but except for the second line, it matches this oldie:
 * I eat my peas with honey (7 syllables)
 * I've done it all my life (6 instead of 8)
 * They do taste kind of funny (7)
 * But it keeps them on my knife (7)
 * ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:06, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * "Iambic trimeter", maybe? This may help too. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:31, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

-`---`- --`--`-- -`-`-`- --`-`-` Looks like some type of an iamb. Especially the 1st and 3rd lines are pure iambic. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:34, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Though I think it's mixed metre: 1 and 3 are iambic, 2 is anapestic, 4 is anapestic with iambic.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:43, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It's ballad meter, with the "and" and "in" properly ending the first and third lines rather than beginning the second and fourth lines. Otherwise you're splitting a metrical foot across two lines.  Not that that's intrinsically a bad thing to do; strictly regular form is easier to analyze, but that is hardly the first priority in writing poetry.  John M Baker (talk) 15:45, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Word for low quality scientific papers
What word can be used for the type of papers/articles (usually humanitarian) which have low quality, have no or little sources, trivial conclusions, just verbose texts about nothing but pretending to be scientific, but nevertheless not pseudo-scientific in the traditional sense? This type of "science about nothing", "science for science's sake" is quite wide-spread today.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:39, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you have an example or two? Terms that come to mind are Pseudoscience [already mentioned] and Fringe science. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:07, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I think Любослов means something like what is described in "How science goes wrong" (The Economist, Oct 19, 2013). See also publish or perish, though it's not covered well there. All I could think of is fluff. ---Sluzzelin talk  17:21, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * "Factoid" and "Truthiness" also come to mind. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:26, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, by the way I didn't mean that article, but a different negative consequence of the publish or perish maxim, i.e. not bunk or fake or cherry-picking, but lots of words signifying nothing. ---Sluzzelin talk  17:28, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Bullshit? InedibleHulk (talk) 20:07, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The Sokal affair was an attempt to expose/criticise/parody the sort of writing I think you mean. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:48, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Любослов Езыкин -- Generic terms are "filler", "Curriculum Vitae fodder", "published only to bolster the author's credentials on paper towards achieving tenure" etc., but none of those are science-specific... AnonMoos (talk) 23:48, 25 July 2014 (UTC)


 * (71.20.250.51 (talk) 03:22, 26 July 2014 (UTC))


 * Hence the Tom Lehrer comment about Gilbert and Sullivan: "Full of words and music, and signifying nothing." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:03, 26 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Humanitarian? As opposed to vegetarian? I think you mean "humanities". Anyway, how about "aerothermology" or hot-air research? (Which is presumably a valid scientific discipline.) The Sokal affair text, by the way, is characterised as outright pseudoscience in that article. That said, the word "bunk" is probably sufficient and covers it all, including bad science – if not borderline pseudoscience – like what Quentin Atkinson has become infamous for peddling. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:55, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We are sometimes speaking about "salami publishing" - instead of giving the whole research at once, you slice it thinner and thinner and thinner (until a reviewer writes "this salami is sliced to thin" ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:33, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * As with this? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:07, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Stephan, I certainly hope he writes "this salami is sliced too thin", or I won't be reading any of his reviews. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:20, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ugh...one of the errors I'm very aware of[f], and still seem to make over and over again. There must be something lo[o]se in my brain! Or English is a weird bastard of a language ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:17, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Never a truer word was spoken. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  00:36, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. No, the BS word is too straightforward and offending. I'd like more neutral euphemisms. It happened I was having a conversation with some guy about his "scientific" article which was not good at all, and he seemed to have no good competence (just shallow general knowledge; many ordinary RD/L-ers here know much more) in what he was writing about (in spite of his degrees and all) but I couldn't find a proper word to characterise it. At the end I decided not to use one word, I didn't name this and just said the paper was bad and shallow or like that. Nevertheless, he didn't like my very short simple critic and was very offended. He appeared to be such an arrogant person. I do not want to give his name though, sorry.

It is not about traditional pseudoscience, it is about "science-like" texts ("mimicry science", hm?). From the first look they are good but they are about nothing. Many words but no good science. I was lurking through a dictionary for scribble, twaddle, babble, etc. but no, too informal. Verbiage? Not exactly. So, probably, there is no good euphemism for that. These works are pretending to be scientific but they'd be better considered as petty amateur journalism. Like the guy above, he thinks he is smart and competent and has a degree (wow!), he writes about something he knows little about, he's sure his piece is worth something, but in reality it is nonsense and textual trash. He may even send it somewhere and get it published, because he has good connections ("science mafia"?). I have had no illusions about modern science, but frankly after that I was very disappointed about such low level of it. I don't want to and cannot call this "scientific", it should offend good "old school" scientists.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:12, 27 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Whatever pretends to be science but really isn't, including pure useless blather (sorry for linking to it again, but it's just such a priceless example), is by definition pseudoscience. "Mimicry science" is a good way to put it (that I have thought of before myself actually). Full of logical and rhetorical fallacies? No consistent method or even structure and purpose, let alone theoretical background? You emerge more confused after reading than before because you have no damn idea what the paper is about? Congrats, you have a pseudoscientific paper on your hands. It's not a shame for a paper to be wrong; it's much worse to be so useless to fit the characterisation of not even wrong. When even an expert doesn't understand what the hell a paper is even about or for, it's not the expert who is at fault or too stupid. See also cargo cult science, pathological science and junk science for various other flavours of pseudoscience. If the paper uses a lot of superficially impressive terminology without rhyme nor reason, perhaps the term you are looking for is technobabble? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:29, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You could also compare your colleague to Deepak Chopra if you would like to damn him with faint praise ... :-) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:41, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The guy is not a physician but formally of our tribe, a linguist with MA degree, who works at American university. This is why it's bad. The article is not entirely hopeless, but of very low quality, it is a bunch of well-known facts and his unsourced or badly sources fantasies. As I said it is the level of amateur journalism, it is quite worth to be published in some sort of popular general education web sites "for dummies", but not to be praised as a good scientific article. This "science" obviously can be done by any student or amateur linguist. But the guy is very proud of it, he boasted that somebody even reviewed it and gave praised responses.
 * Thank you for your answers anyway, it appeared to be a very interesting borderless theme.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:50, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, so it's lightweight, largely trivial fluff (or worse, "everybody-knows-that"-type "commonsensical" prejudice) that isn't necessarily all wrong or even "not even wrong", but simply of a low standard and little value – even as popular science: Well-written and well-researched popular science, in fact, is extremely difficult to achieve, and hence rare and valuable (in fact, this is exactly what Wikipedia aspires to deliver, after all).
 * A German expression that comes to mind is Dünnbrettbohrer – not a dimwit as the translation "intellectual lightweight" I've encountered could be taken to imply, but somebody who takes the path of least resistance (not necessarily stupid, but intellectually lazy). And in your case, appears to be seriously delusional about it, and infuriatingly, even successful with this strategy – as so often, regrettably. Of course, that's what you get when specialised expertise becomes rarer and rarer and even general education declines. People's expectations and standards of quality decrease, as they are not even aware that far superior, deeper and more solidly founded work exists, and they fail to realise that serious contributions to any field of science (including popularisation of science) require damn hard work. Anything that has value requires hard work, of course. (Gee, isn't that obvious?)
 * Anyway, a similarity with the pseudoscientific method does exist here, don't you think? That's also what Atkinson's stuff reminds me of. Very much borderline. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:16, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you again for the answers. As always here, a quite simple question may lead to a very interesting discussion.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:52, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Postmodernism? -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:33, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not an expert in such abstract theories but it seems "no" in the case I mentioned above. Florian explained this situation quite good.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:56, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Scientifical? 93.95.251.190 (talk) 14:54, 29 July 2014 (UTC)