Over at The World's Fair, David asks readers to share a moment in which they were "humiliated in the name of science." Fortunately I haven't had any "D'oh! I put the head on the wrong end!" moments as yet, but I'll briefly share a recent story of how I almost humiliated myself in a room full of professors and friends.
About a month and a half ago Brian Richmond came to present a lecture about the evolution of hominid bipedalism at Rutgers, specifically dealing with Orrorin. As he went through the introductory material, mentioning the evidence for bipedalism in the earliest known hominids, I thought to myself "How could he have missed the paper about Orrorin that was published in Science just last month?" I sat there, holding onto the question until the end, when eventually Richmond started talking about that particular study. Not only did he know about it, he was one of the authors of it.
I'm sure that my face turned red slightly at that point; I have only taken a more intense interest in paleoanthropology in the past year and I don't always remember the names of authors. I told Richmond about my foiled attempt to look smart after the lecture and he seemed to think it was a little amusing, admitting that he tried to build up suspense a little bit by not mentioning the new research until a few minutes in. Fortunately nothing bad came of the experience, but it has made me pay closer attention to authorship since then.
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One of the authors? Dude, he was first author. Almost an epic faux pas there! :)
This is one of the reasons I could never have gone the career direction you're taking - I would be doing things like that every day. And I'm always amazed that there are people who never ever make mistakes like that.
deang,
After awhile it starts to come naturally, almost like you wouldn't forget the names of your friends, or of famous people. When you read several dozen papers from a well established scientist, and you continually use their methods or observations to conduct your own experiments, you start referring to them, and it sometimes sounds as if you have some well-grounded relationship with them (you never know who you'll run into at a meeting as well)!