Do better
Retracted on November 26, 2023.
Thursday was Thanksgiving—alas, I already gave all my thanks out last year. So, I had none to give this time around. Sefernday had been canceled too. So, I did them one better and canceled Thanksgiving. One question remained: How to go about canceling Christmas? I didn’t give even a rat’s ass for that one this year.
Then these buttocksless rats milling around my palatial abode gave me an idea: Perhaps it was time I returned to my erstwhile job as a science writer, public intellectual, and globally renowned researcher.
Joachim Boldt held the high honor for the most scientific papers retracted in the history of science. He even beat out Andrew Wakefield. But I knew I could do better.
And thus was born my scientific study on the ideal number of turn signal blinks before one changes lanes on a freeway. José Vargas de las Joyas Matemáticas may not approve of my return to a multitude of mathematicalisms, but I would cross that bridge when I reached it (and burn it down).
Not even my treatise on the 1990s, wherein I argued that Encino Man was the height of Hollywood entertainment, could match this magnificent effort at writing a bunch of sciency words on paper and publishing it (out the front of my own computer printer).
However, my paper was quickly discredited and forcibly retracted when they discovered I plagiarized the Stanford paper which asserted I am the unholy offspring of James Joyce and Stanley Unwin, and that I simply replaced most words in it with onomatopoeic representations of eructance, flatulence, hooting, keening, shrieking, and babbling. The surprise roadblocks I put up on the freeway to test my hypotheses were also heavily criticized.
Aaaah! Ayayay! Pwockah, pwockah! Wheeple, whopple! Euugh! Eorrgh! Norrgh! Rarrgh! Pbthpbthptbh! Pppbbbttthhh! Ay! Ay! Yip! Yip! Meep, mippy, morp! Murp! Murple, murple, turple! Nebethepetépeplepett! Hyunh! Hyunh, hyunh, hyunh! According to poople, poople: Norrgh! Ayayay! Yayoy—oh, woy!
Furthermore, eeeh! Eeeh! Eeeh! Ee-ee-ee-eeeh! Rarg! Grårrgh! Mlaw! Mlaww! Mlawww! “Meep, mippy, morp! Zneerp! Zneerp, zneerp!” Wowowow oh yeah, oh yeah! Yoy! Woy! Boy! Pow! Biff! Zork! Neener-neener, a weener-weener, ah, ah, ahahah! Oy! Woy! Pbthpbthpbththth!!
Wheekhah! Whackah! Stipple! Stopple! Mipple, murple! Peeple, popple! Ooooeeeuuuyyy!
(That paper certainly impacts before retract!)
At least I hadn’t been accused of taxonomic vandalism like a certain herpetologist: Silly Raymond Hoser named some reptiles after his family and pets, but I could do him one better: I decided to name my family and pets after reptiles. My own nominomania would certainly outdo Hoser—it would even outdo the Nouvelle École’s malicious mischief in malacology. And thus was born the field of herpaderpetology.
My skills as a copro-coleopterist may not be useful anymore—not since global warming caused all the dung beetles around these parts to pack up shop and roll their little dung balls up to Canada. But my PhDs in herpetometry and herpehepatology would again be useful. I got out my tape measure. Indeed I knew I could better. And I did.