Swedish scientists admit to 17 years of sneaking Bob Dylan lyrics into research articles
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
For 17 years, Bob Dylan's lyrics have been showing up in rather unlikely places.
"Articles we have written about research by others, book introductions, editorials, and things like that," Eddie Weitzberg, a professor from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, confessed. "We're not talking about scientific papers — we could have got in trouble for that."
Weitzberg and his colleague, John Jundberg, began what's become a quirky tradition of Bob-Dylan oneupmanship when they wrote a piece about gas and titled it, "Nitric Oxide and inflammation: The answer is blowing in the wind." The duo thought it was a funny — and fun — little secret, so they kept adding snippets of Dylan songs into their work.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A few years into the practice, The Local reports, Weitzberg and Jundberg invited their colleagues to join the competition. The pun-loving group expanded to include five scientists, who plan to keep the game up until retirement. The prize for the professor who pulls off the most Dylan references? One free lunch.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Sarah Eberspacher is an associate editor at TheWeek.com. She has previously worked as a sports reporter at The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus and The Arizona Republic. She graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
