this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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Science Memes

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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 132 points 4 days ago (3 children)

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

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 66 points 4 days 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.

[–] MarriedCavelady50@lemmy.ml 42 points 4 days ago

The data is left as an exercise to the reader.

If it worked for Grandpas Bible then it can work here too!

[–] a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Could be a mathmatician writing about numbers and such.

[–] NewOldGuard@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

We still do research and have lots of work to do before a paper even begins lol

[–] a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Like, on your favorite number?

[–] NewOldGuard@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Lmaoo, I see your name now you’re funny

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 68 points 3 days 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 3 days ago

Ego the Living Planet, but it's just academia

[–] socsa@piefed.social 69 points 4 days 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 55 points 4 days 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 44 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 45 points 3 days ago

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

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 3 days 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.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 19 points 3 days 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 3 days ago

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

[–] user1234@lemmynsfw.com 23 points 3 days ago

This seems like it should be in the LinkedInLunatics community.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] slappyfuck@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 days 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.”

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 22 points 4 days 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 3 days 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

[–] dugmeup@lemmynsfw.com 15 points 4 days ago

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

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I remeber something about monkeys and typewriters 🤔

[–] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 19 hours 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 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 10 points 3 days 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 3 days ago

Yes, this is what I meant.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Was even Paul Erdös that productive?

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago

That's a bit right?

Easy there Mr. Hubbard!