Source: LinkedIn

Vito Tartamella, author and managing editor of the science monthly Focus

¡°Would you read a paper written by Stronzo Bestiale [translation ¨C total asshole]?¡± asks ¨C the self-declared ¡°only italian scientific blog on profanity¡±.

¡°A dose of mistrust would be justified: the name says it all,¡± the post continues. ¡°Yet, in 1987, professor Bestiale, supposedly a physicist in Palermo, Sicily, authored major papers in prestigious scientific peer reviewed journals such as the Journal of Statistical Physics, the Journal of Chemical Physics and the proceedings of a meeting of American Physical Society in Monterey.¡±

The blog ¨C highlighted to Times Higher Education after our story about the French phrase for ¡°your mother in a leopard-skin G-string¡± being included in a paper ¨C is written by Vito Tartamella, author and managing editor of the science monthly Focus, and it goes on to detail his investigations into the veracity of Mr Bestiale¡¯s publication record.

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¡°I tried to find this person in Italian telephone directories,¡± he says. ¡°In Italy there are 7 Bestiale, mostly in Piedmont. None of them, however, has the name Stronzo (Turd or Asshole: who would call their own son that?)¡±

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Stronzo Bestiale does not exist. The name appears ¡°in the papers authored by Bill Moran and William G. Hoover, two influential American scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory¡±.

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Dr Tartamella wrote to Professor Hoover, now retired, to ask him the true story of Stronzo Bestiale.

He was told that while travelling on a flight to Paris, Professor Hoover had been sat next to two Italian women who ¡°spoke among themselves, saying continually: ¡®Che stronzo (what an asshole)!¡¯, ¡®Stronzo bestiale (total asshole)¡¯.¡±

The phrases stuck in Professor Hoover¡¯s mind, so he found out what Stronzo Bestiale meant. He decided the name would be the perfect co-author for a paper that had been refused publication by two journals already, so he ¡°decided to submit my papers again, simply by changing the title and adding the name of that author¡±. The paper was published.

Although not everyone took the joke well (the then president of the Italian Physical Society described it as an offence ¡°to the entire Italian scientific community¡±), it ¡°laid bare how vulnerable control systems in the review of scientific research were (and still are!)¡±, Dr Tartamella writes.

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¡°Incredibly, even today, years later, Stronzo Bestiale continues to be present as the author of publications in scientific databases: is it not extraordinary?¡±

The post was picked up by the , which points out that ¡°this isn¡¯t the first time a scientist has added a fictional co-author to a paper to make a point¡±. ¡°In 1978, Polly Matzinger added her impeccably-named Afghan hound, Galadriel Mirkwood, to a Journal of Experimental Medicine paper to protest the use of passive voice in scientific papers.

¡°Hilarious as these examples are, it does prove a point that¡¯s a little less fun: The scientific community needs to be on its toes about who (or what) is writing the papers they publish, to help keep merde out of the literature.¡±

Send links to topical, insightful and quirky online comment by and about academics to chris.parr@tesglobal.com

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