this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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Science Memes

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Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 124 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What about, y'know, doing the actual research you're supposed to be writing about?

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 67 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Just ask chatgpt to do that.

And why write 4000 words that makes sense every day when the LLM can hallucinate 120 papers every day.

Could be a mathmatician writing about numbers and such.

[–] socsa@piefed.social 65 points 1 week ago (2 children)

At my peak, I easily posted a million words a year to Reddit. The idea that I wasn't putting that effort into actual productive writing is definitely an idea I've had many, many times.

[–] discocactus@lemmy.world 52 points 1 week ago

It was productive, just not for you. The LLM trainers are happy for all that VC money you helped them get.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 43 points 1 week ago (2 children)

No, dialogue is important practice. We once wrote letters to each other.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, what ever happened between you two, anyway? You guys used to be so lovey dovey!

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 64 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wish I knew this when I was starting out:

  • write grant proposals instead of articles
  • use the winning grants to support grad students
  • get the grad students to do the research and writing which motivate new grant proposals
  • keep writing grant proposals until the entire world is either your grad students, or people funding your research
[–] 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 16 points 1 week ago

Ego the Living Planet, but it's just academia

[–] reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 42 points 1 week ago

Love it when people publish just to publish, really improves the whole academic enterprise!

[–] user1234@lemmynsfw.com 23 points 1 week ago

This seems like it should be in the LinkedInLunatics community.

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Bonus points if you take all those words you wrote, sort them alphabetically, and publish them as ~3k word works. Challenge the STEM community to reconstruct your original papers.

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Fun fact: Hooke's law (f= kx for springs) was originally published as an anagram - all the letters in alphabetical order. Latin, of course.

https://spark.iop.org/puzzle-hookes-law

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

4000 words? That's only like 40 minutes a day at 100 wpm, a speed anyone writing professionally should easily be able to maintain. Spend half the workday writing. 24000 words a day. 6 times the articles. Thank me later.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 16 points 1 week ago

Ah, a man of ~~culture~~ management, I see

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 week ago

This is like the myth of the 10x AI developer. Even if I could code 10x faster, coding is only maybe 25% of what I do at best.

[–] dugmeup@lemmynsfw.com 15 points 1 week ago

Lol someone is equating writing the next twilight saga to research, which requires (checks notes) ... research

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] slappyfuck@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago

That’s exactly what I thought this was at first. Reminds me of an old video, maybe TikTok, where some guy is like “ok get two fast food jobs and live in your car. Work 80 hours a week. Buy a duplex and then rent it out.”

[–] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I know of a manager who unironically believes this for internal corporate technical reports (ours are academic style and more rigorous and formal than they need be...). It's not quite to this extent, but I've overheard conversations where the manager apparently can't fathom why their subordinates are incapable of double digits over a year.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Liberal mem- bers of the credentialed classes love to use the word empower when they talk about “people,” but the use of that verb objecti- fies the recipients of their help while implying that the people have no access to power without them.

I'm loving just the introduction.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 3 points 1 week ago

Yes, this is what I meant.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Was even Paul Erdös that productive?

Easy there Mr. Hubbard!