Detwiler advances a new paradigm

I usually hate get-rich-quick schemes and the sketchy mountebanks who promote them, but this week I was somewhere in the middle of my interminable thesis when I came up with the best money-making idea ever. I was typing away about emotion and decision making when I suddenly realized that at least four people on page 40 had "found" something. With my extensive training in English (I do actually have an English degree), I decided that I would be remiss to allow everyone in my thesis to "find" things. Some of them were going to have to "determine" or "ascertain" their things. I began to flip back through the earlier pages, wondering how many scientists I had in there "establishing" or "contending" various theorems. It was then that I had an epiphany. Why the hell hasn't anyone created a special thesaurus for scientists that has 4,000 synonyms of the words "find" and "argue" already in past tense and passive voice for quick reference?

Let me explain why this is a good idea. The other day a friend of mine laughingly pointed out a paragraph in a paper from the 1950s that she was reading for her cognitive psychology class that contained the phrase, "My conception, which does not really explain anything...."

Why should that be funny? Well, in today's science world of total objectivism, language like this would absolutely not ever be allowed into a peer-reviewed journal. It is our job as scientists to take ourselves completely out of our research, usually by using passive voice and third person, and writing generally awkward, unnatural sentences. While this is perfectly reasonable and likely even an absolute requirement for the continued advancement of science, it is time-consuming to write in a way you would never speak. Thus, many a great scientist has done great research, but gotten bogged down in the particulars of writing a manuscript.

I mean seriously, how ridiculous would it be if people walked around referring to themselves and their friends by their last names and speaking entirely in the passive voice? Actually, perhaps I forgot to mention, but this weekend Detwiler, Wong, et al. proposed an experiment in which Duke graduate students were offered ethanol in a novel environment. It was hypothesized that a significant number of subjects would be found to consume increased quantities of cream puffs and brownies upon completion of ethanol treatment. This occurred. In addition, several participants were found to be on the couch during the next light cycle.

So, back to this thesaurus. Undoubtedly many scientists are at this very moment banging their heads against desks in agony that there aren't more synonyms for the word "examine," or more punctuation marks that can be used in place of commas. Do you, the intelligent, entrepreneurial student body of Duke, want to let this go on?

And it's not like you have to totally rely on the English language. You can even make up some words, like assertifind, or replicatify. You'll be like Shakespeare, only more scientific. And if you're really gonna go for it, you might also want to provide some tips on how to refer to one's own research in a paper without sounding annoyingly like Terrell Owens.

And yes, I know that in theory, one should be able to use a regular thesaurus for this kind of thing, but I and my scientist brothers and sisters have more important things to do than hang out on thesaurus.com all day. like calculate p-values.

So how about you get on that, and then while I and the rest of my scientist friends are busy writing theses and manuscripts and consulting your illustrious tome, you can be writing your name on hundred-dollar bills before using them to wipe Cristal off your 40 bitches. Detwiler is a genius (2007).