Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Inspired by the most popular search-term combination currently bringing readers to Riddled: "Alcohol + syndrome + painting"

Having already recruited yeasts from the head brewer's beard, what will Rogue Brewery do for their next novelty brewery? Our sources tell us that they are keen to sample the intestinal flora of a Texan individual, who blames the yeast infection in his bowels for his recurring and deplorable state of pixillation. Remember, you read it at Riddled first!

The story has featured in all manner of highly reputed media ranging all the way from Huffington Post to Fox News, by way of the Daily Fail and the Torygraph. First author Barbara Cordell has not been backward in coming forward with statements and press releases. It has also come to the attention of the editorial board of Bernouli's Encyclopedia of Imaginary Diseases, who must decide whether to de-list 'auto-brewery syndrome' from future editions of the Encyclopedia if it turns out to be real after all. Grave responsibilities rest on the editors' shoulders, no wait, that's the rucksack. The present inclusion of ABS rests on a critical 2000 review, focussing on ABS as a defense against drunk-driving charges, in which the opportunity for jokes about "auto-intoxication" were woefully neglected.


Closer examination reveals that the paper currently saturating the Interlattice appeared not in the BMJ... nor in the Lancet... nor even the humble NEMJ... but in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine, a recently-founded bottom-feeding on-line vanity press from a predatory open-access publisher,* where editorial overview is limited to cashing the contributors' cheques.
It certainly does not extend as far as proof-reading.
Cynical readers will note that the first author is qualified primarily in aromatherapy. In another capacity she offers training courses in "clinical aromatherapy",
with special reference to inflammation, pain, insomnia, cancer, AIDS & women's health.
More relevant expertise to the report comes from the second author, a gastro-enterologist; the extent of his involvement is not clear, but he isn't sending out press releases.

Having tabled this satisfactory evidence, we declared the meeting of the Bernouli Encyclopedia Editorial Board to be over, to the relief of the Old Entomologist bar-staff who were running rapidly out of patience and free peanuts. We returned to Riddled Laboratory to continue our research into splicing the Psilocybe weraroa and Tinea pedis genomes to produce a hallucinogenic variety of athletes' foot.
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* SCIRP has prior form, with a record of swiping already-published papers to pad out its journals, and for listing people as members of its editorial boards / review panels without the pettifogging formality of letting them know.

6 comments:

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Having already recruited yeasts from the head brewer's beard

Just be careful, old chum, yeasts have been recruited with fatal results.

OBS said...

I went to a beer tasting yesterday of some "MAO" beer from NZ. It was decent, mostly. Some quite tasty, others notsomuch.

And the boxes had old photos on them that kinda looked like paintings, so there's that.

Smut Clyde said...

Moa beer?
Like their vodka, it's an exercise in branding. Craft-beer hipsters gave up on them a while ago because they kept changing labels and re-naming beers after each focus group.

OBS said...

Yeah, "moa" not Mao. Although I hear Mao's Red Ale is the life of the party.

Smut Clyde said...

I brewed a Mao Mild once. As well as Lenin Lager, and Stalin Stout ("Every Pint its own Purge!").
Not a Trotsky Headsplitter Bitter because that would be JUST WRONG.

Substance McGravitas said...

I'd pick that last. With ice!