Something called Business Insider compiled a list of its 50 Sexiest Scientists. No one from Science 2.0 is on it but that isn't the only sign this is poorly researched. The big red flag is that a lot of these don't even have ages, which means the authors saw a Scientists Are Sexy Facebook page (or whatever) and spent 5 minutes copying and pasting them because, you know, anything on Facebook is apparently public domain or simply for sale,(1) including your avatar they want to stick in their magazine.
Most of these are suitably ridiculous - the list is, as you might guess, pretty avatars combined with something that says Ph.D. But one stuck out.
As many of you have suspected, science media is controlled by a secret society of the smartest people in the world, known as The Quantum Pentaverate,(2) who run everything. Including the newspapers. We meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado known as "The Meadows" but we also correspond over email.
In discussion with fellow QP members, #39 from the University of Washington was noteworthy. If her age is accurate, that means she got an assistant professorship at the age of 25 and she’s got something like 40 publications. Do they just hand out biostats publications like candy?
Link: Business Insider.
Or, we considered, we just found a new member of the Quantum Pentaverate. After all, Dr. Franziska Michor was featured in these very pages (Maybe, If Hundred Pound Genius Chicks Are Your Thing, Franziska Michor Is Okay) and she got her Ph.D. at 22 and had her own lab shortly thereafter. Sure, the average age of an RO1 grant may be over 40 but just like researchers in their 70s get grants, maybe 11 year olds do too, way at the other tail of the curve. In that context, a professorship at 25 is less of a big deal.
NOTES:
(1) What about here? Are we like Facebook about your privacy? No, we are the anti-Facebook, and even anti-creative-commons. You sign over absolutely zero rights to anyone of any kind by contributing here. You own it without qualification. All we get is the right to publish it here and you can revoke that right with the click of button, no hard feelings.
(2) Here is a picture of me from our last QP meeting.
If that isn't a right-wing stereotype waiting to happen, I don't know what is. Luckily I had taken off the bowtie. I wish I could embed a maniacal laugh into images.
Here is the Mike Myers movie that Pentaverate bit was shamelessly lifted from:
