Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Paper writer

If you are a researcher studying a niche topic, one of the few ways to get some attention is to give your paper a witty title featuring a pop culture reference. Feedback has long been a fan of such things, but we would never have thought to do what the team led by at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands did, which is to get systematic about it.

Budel and his colleagues searched two academic databases for papers whose titles contain references to the titles of songs by the Beatles. They ended up with 鈥�2237 exact references and 963 instances of creative wordplay鈥�.

That is a lot of Beatles jokes, so without further ado: the most-used Beatles song in academic paper titles is The Long and Winding Road. Budel鈥檚 team found 798 examples of this, such as 鈥溾��. It was followed by With a Little Help From My Friends (209), Here, There and Everywhere (129) and Here Comes the Sun (103).

Feedback feels that many of these phrases are quite easy to incorporate. We are more impressed by the 15 research groups apiece that managed to use 鈥淕lass onion鈥�, 鈥淪trawberry fields forever鈥� and 鈥淣orwegian wood (This bird has flown)鈥�. The last of these gave rise to the frankly majestic 鈥溾��. We thought it would be really tricky to use something like 鈥淓verybody鈥檚 got something to hide except me and my monkey鈥�, but then we checked and found that on .

The authors also performed a follow-up study looking for paper titles that use Beatles lyrics, yielding such gems as 鈥溾�� and 鈥溾�樷��.

Feedback has one final thought: we wonder if this study reflects the influence of the , the awards granted for research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. The Igs have been running since 1991, which is more than enough time for scientists and funders to realise that they are a potential avenue to scientific success. This study, surely, will be in the running for an Ig at some point 鈥� but did the researchers foresee that?

We all know what an Oscar bait movie is: it鈥檚 probably a historical drama, its lead actor undergoes some sort of difficult physical transformation and it鈥檚 not in the least bit funny. Is this study of Beatles lyrics in scientific papers perhaps an example of Ig Nobel bait?

Love me do

Speaking of the Ig Nobels, this year鈥檚 were bestowed on 3 September. The winners came together at a ceremony in Zurich, Switzerland. It was the time the Ig Nobel ceremony had been held outside the US, on the grounds that 鈥渋t has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country鈥�, said founder Marc Abrahams. Eesh.

Ten prizes were awarded in total. The biomechanics prize went to a three-person team that developed a . Kissing, it seems, is 鈥渘on-agonistic interactions involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer鈥�. Feedback鈥檚 immediate thought was that this seemed to exclude kissing people on the cheek, and indeed it does. Then we delved into the paper and discovered there is a possibility that kissing evolved from premastication: chewing food in your mouth before sharing it with someone else. We should have known better than to read on.

Can鈥檛 buy me love

We will pass swiftly over the economics prize, which recognises work showing that upper-class people are more likely to engage in unethical behaviour. Thanks, we know; the more pressing issue is stopping them.

Instead, we will move to the biology prize, given to the authors of a 鈥渇or gently stepping on various parts of various venomous snakes 鈥� repeatedly, at various temperatures at various times of day 鈥� to try to learn what does and what does not induce a venomous snake to bite a human鈥�.

Feedback actually found ourselves having a sense-of-humour failure about this: we get the idea, but isn鈥檛 it a bit, well, cruel? So we looked it up and learned that the retracted the study in February 2025, on the grounds that 鈥淭he Animal Ethics Committee of Butantan Institute confirmed that the approval granted to the Authors for their research on snakes (Bothrops jararaca) did not include newborn snakes or the use of the 鈥榮oft stepping鈥� method.鈥� Maybe Feedback is soft-hearted, but we find ourselves agreeing that it is bad to step on baby snakes.

That was unexpectedly nasty, so let鈥檚 end with the peace prize, which is 鈥渇or documenting that we value friends who are vicious to people we dislike鈥�. Researchers conducted surveys showing that people prefer friends who are nice to them and who are generally nice to other people, but they also sometimes value a friend who is prepared to be mean to one鈥檚 enemies. Feedback congratulates the researchers for figuring out something that one could learn by watching any romantic comedy. Or, to : 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the best friend鈥檚 job: vilifying and grousing鈥�.

Got a story for Feedback?

You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week鈥檚 and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.

We cannot live without soil. It provides us with building materials, most of our antibiotics and 95 per cent of our food.

In, photographer and soil ecologist Frank Ashwood urges us to better appreciate and protect the soil we rely on. He does so with stunning images of the creatures that call soil home.

The adorable velvet worm in the main image was found under a log in a misty beech forest on the South Island of New Zealand. 鈥淭hey look like little worms rolled in sequins,鈥� says Ashwood. But looks can be deceiving: 鈥淭hey crawl around and shoot glue out of special organs on their heads to immobilise their pray, which they鈥檒l then go and eat while alive.鈥�

A droplet of sperm deposited by a male springtail, a tiny insect-like creature, sits atop a delicate stem made of protein-rich secretions in the image below. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like a lollipop, basically, with a bit of sperm-rich fluid on the top, which the males leave for the females to come and find,鈥� says Ashwood.

But beware any marauding rivals. 鈥淚f a male finds another springtail鈥檚 spermatophore, they will actually eat it to destroy it,鈥� he says.

Below, a beautiful woodlouse spider stares straight down the lens of Ashwood鈥檚 camera. Its large fangs have evolved to better hunt woodlice. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l come at a woodlouse from the top or the side, grasp it, then reach underneath with those sharp bits of the fangs and pierce into the soft underbelly,鈥� he says.

A bright yellow slime mould stretches across a decaying log in the shot below. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a big, sprawling mass of a single cell, essentially; they branch out looking for food,鈥� says Ashwood. The mould鈥檚 efficient networks have been used to map road networks, the fastest way out of an IKEA showroom and dark matter throughout the universe, he says.

This gorgeous giant springtail, below, was found in a forest in New Zealand. Its orange spines help it camouflage against logs. 鈥淏ecause they鈥檙e rare, when you do see one, it鈥檚 a moment of pure exhilaration,鈥� says Ashwood. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e an indicator of the forest being in really good condition.鈥�

Ashwood, who is based at Lincoln University in New Zealand, snapped the silvery springtail below while in the UK. During the Victorian period in the 1800s, their iridescent scales were used to test microscopes. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e got really ornate, tiny sculpturing on them, so the better detail you could see, the better your microscope,鈥� he says.

Ashwood hopes his book will encourage people to protect soil, for instance by reducing deforestation and farming more sustainably. 鈥淥ver half of the world鈥檚 biodiversity is in soil, and we鈥檙e losing it at a rate that is not sustainable,鈥� he says.

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Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

PlantGPT

There are some things Feedback just isn鈥檛 good at, and one of them is plant care. Whatever鈥檚 the opposite of a green thumb (a red toe?), that is what we have. Plants wither and die under our ministrations, and we aren鈥檛 alone in this: Mrs Feedback is, if anything, even worse, to the point where she once managed to kill a house cactus.

Hence, there was great rejoicing in the Feedback household when executive editor Timothy Revell sent us a press release about PlantSenso, 鈥渁 gamified plant companion that transforms indoor greenery into an intelligent, interactive journey by giving nature a personality and voice through generative AI鈥�.

O frabjous day, we thought. A solution is at hand: finally our plants will live. And so we read on.

is a plastic gizmo with a little screen on the front. You insert it into the soil of a plant pot, whereupon it monitors light, moisture and temperature. This raw data is then displayed on the screen through the medium of an animated critter that looks like a reject from Animal Crossing or 笔辞办茅尘辞苍. Readers old enough to remember the original Tamagotchi, or retro enough to still own one, may also experience a spark of recognition. If the plant is struggling, the PlantSenso animal will alert its owner, who can then intervene.

For instance, if the plant has been overwatered, the onscreen critter will be seen bobbing around in floodwater. If it isn鈥檛 getting enough light, its environment becomes glumly crepuscular.

The press release explains the overall vision: 鈥淒esigned specifically for plant beginners, Gen Z, and millennial families, PlantSenso replaces complex charts, technical parameters, and soil percentages with an intuitive, low-learning-curve visual experience. Instead of managing plants like a care chore, PlantSenso turns standard potted plants into emotionally connected digital pets, making plant care completely stress-free, fun, and highly giftable.鈥�

We discussed PlantSenso with Mrs Feedback and she made the distressingly valid point that, over the years, we have supported our plant-care efforts by purchasing expert books, reading online guides, setting routines, trying to rope in Feedback Jr (prompting much eye-rolling) and even creating online reminders. None of these got through to us for more than a few weeks, and she suspected PlantSenso would be the same. We might get her one for Christmas.

翱迟迟补飞补蝉苍鈥檛

Reader Kim Brooks was seeking information about , a gathering of fans of comic books, science fiction and other fun things, which is being held in Canada鈥檚 capital city from 11 to 13 September. She proceeded to the search engine DuckDuckGo, only to be met with a strange assertion. Ottawa Comiccon, according to the AI summary at the top of the page, was a 鈥淢ulti-genre fan convention in the United States鈥�.

Feedback would never just believe a story like this, even with the screenshot that Kim helpfully supplied, so we plugged 鈥淥ttawa Comiccon鈥� into DuckDuckGo and got exactly the same thing.

To be fair to DuckDuckGo, there are places in Illinois, Kansas and other US states called Ottawa. But the AI summary included a link to the actual convention website, which is explicitly Canadian, with an Ontario address at the bottom. This is exactly the sort of thing one might want an intelligent system to be able to figure out.

However, Kim offers an alternative explanation, beyond mere AI tomfoolery: 鈥淧erhaps I have simply missed an annexation decree.鈥�

Abbrev

Lately, we have been collecting examples of names that have been unfortunately truncated by social media and other modern afflictions, such as the Stroke Association being deprived of its -ociation (15 August) and a quality assurance manager being similarly offensively abbreviated (29 August).

On this note, we have a story sent in by Steve Powell. Steve wasn鈥檛 able to confirm it and our attempt also failed, as we will explain, but we like it, so what the heck.

Decades ago, Steve was told a story about 鈥渢he late great Christopher Strachey鈥�, a computer scientist who, among many other things, created one of the first video games. 鈥淎pparently some periodical (it could have been Computer Weekly), in the 1970s, received a complaining letter about computer-typed correspondence always truncating their name,鈥� says Steve. 鈥淭his complainant firmly blamed the computer. In response to this Christopher wrote a letter (which was, I believe, printed, though I cannot find a reference to it online).鈥�

At this point, Feedback will cut in with a reminder that we, too, could not confirm this. Computer Weekly鈥榮 online archive extends only as far back as 2000, and while Strachey鈥檚 papers are preserved by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, UK, Feedback was unable to find the letter Steve refers to in its online database. So take the following with a pinch of salt.

Strachey鈥檚 letter apparently argued that the computer shouldn鈥檛 be blamed for truncating the name. 鈥淭he fault lies entirely with the programmer that did not allow for names longer than a fixed amount. I myself suffer from this affliction receiving letters addressed to STRACHEY, CHRIST: a title to which, I need hardly add, I do not aspire.鈥�

Feedback really wants this to be true. Can anyone, perhaps a hoarder of old computing magazines, shed some light on it?

Got a story for Feedback?

You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week鈥檚 and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.