March 1, 2012
In academic publishing, the least publishable unit (LPU), colloquially ‘publon’ – the smallest measurable quantum of publication, is the minimum amount of information that can generate a publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The term is often used as a joking, ironic, or sometimes derogatory reference to the strategy of pursuing the greatest quantity of publications at the expense of their quality. Publication of the results of research is an essential part of science. The number of publications is sometimes used to assess the work of a scientist and as a basis for distributing research funds. In order to achieve a high rank in such an assessment, there is a trend to split up research results into smaller parts that are published separately, thus increasing the number of publications.
‘Salami publication’ or ‘salami slicing’ is a variant of the smallest-publishable-unit strategy. In salami slicing, data gathered by one research project is separately reported (wholly or in part) in multiple end publications. Salami slicing, apparently named by analogy with the thin slices made from larger pieces of salami meat, is generally considered questionable when not explicitly labeled, as it may lead to the same data being counted multiple times as apparently independent results in aggregate studies.
Posted in Education, Humor, Language, Science |
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March 1, 2012
Structuring, also known as smurfing in banking industry jargon, is the practice of parceling what would otherwise be a large financial transaction into a series of smaller transactions to avoid scrutiny by regulators or law enforcement. Structuring often appears in federal indictments related to money laundering, fraud, and other financial crimes. The term ‘smurfing’ is derived from the image of the cartoon characters, the ‘Smurfs,’ having a large group of many small entities. Miami-based lawyer Gregory Baldwin is said to have coined the term in the 1980s.
Typically each of the smaller transactions is executed in an amount below some statutory limit that normally does not require a financial institution to file a report with a government agency. Criminal enterprises often employ several agents (smurfs) to make the transaction. The term is also applied to activity associated with controlled substances such as pseudoephedrine. In this context the agent will make purchases of small, legal amounts from several drug and grocery stores, with the intent to aggregate the lot for use in the illegal production of methamphetamine.
Posted in Money, Politics |
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March 1, 2012
Salami slicing is a series of many minor actions, often performed by clandestine means, that together results in a larger action that would be difficult or illegal to perform at once. The term is typically used pejoratively. An example of salami slicing, also known as penny shaving, is the fraudulent practice of stealing money repeatedly in extremely small quantities, usually by taking advantage of rounding to the nearest cent in financial transactions. It would be done by always rounding down, and putting the fractions of a cent into another account. The idea is to make the change small enough that any single transaction will go undetected.
In politics, the term salami tactics has been used since the 1940s to refer to a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition. In academia, salami slicing refers to the practice of creating several publications out of material that could have been published in a single journal or review. Historically, actual physical ‘penny shaving’ may be considered a form of salami slicing. The edges of coins made of precious metals have been clipped or shaved by individuals in order to procure small quantities of said metals with the intention that the coin would still retain its nominal value.
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March 1, 2012
Cryptomnesia [krip-tam-nee-zha] occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. It is a memory bias whereby a person may falsely recall generating a thought, not deliberately engaging in plagiarism but rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.
The word was first used by the psychiatrist Théodore Flournoy, in reference to the case of a psychic medium, to suggest a high incidence of ‘latent memories on the part of the medium that come out, sometimes greatly disfigured by a subliminal work of imagination or reasoning, as so often happens in our ordinary dreams.’ Jung suggested the phenomenon in Nietzsche’s ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra.’
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March 1, 2012
An isometric illusion (also called an ambiguous figure or inside/outside illusion) is a type of optical illusion, specifically one due to multistable perception.
In general, any shape built entirely of same-length (i.e., isometric) lines that does not clearly indicate relative direction between its components will evoke such a perceptual ‘flip-flopping.’ The Necker Cube is a famous example of an isometric illusion.
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