Between the Saints and Mardi Gras time: Louisiana is in full celebration right now. Some of the "cultural" elements on view during the Super Bowl reminded me of parallels in the culture of science:
1. The Super Bowl champions are always called the "World Champions" - even though this is a solely US sporting event. Reminiscent of how some researchers who find something genuinely interesting about their biochemical system will give their paper a title that implies universality: Finding: Protein X takes up water when it binds its substrate. Paper title: "Water Uptake During Enzymatic Function". Finding: Protein Y folds faster than protein X. Paper title: "Kinetic Control of Protein Folding in Eukaryotes".
2. Is it becoming more of a tradition to trot out old rock and roll bands at halftime? - The Who this time, The Rolling Stones a couple of years ago. Reminiscent of some Keynote addresses at scientific meetings?
3. Before he won the Super Bowl, Drew Brees was just a "good, solid quaterback." After he won the Super Bowl, ESPN spent enormous amounts of time talking about how he really should be ranked as among the top QBs of all time. Sort of like what happens to a "good, solid researcher" when he or she suddenly gets a Science or Nature publication.
4. Tracy Porter's "game clinching" interception and touchdown in the fourth quarter: this is the figure you save for late in the paper, when you know the reviewers or your colleagues are going to be wavering, and then voila, time to go home.
5. The Saints win the Super Bowl? A paradigm shift? Need more be said?
Item 1 is one of my pet peeves of all time. (As one of my favorite ornithologists once explained, "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a mallard.")
I suppose this is because the feeling coming in is that neither team will be able to stop the other. The mind imagines something like that classic Dolphins-Chargers playoff game, the one where neither team had any chance of stopping the other, the one where San Diego tight end Kellen Winslow died four times during the game and still came back to make winning plays at the end.