Publications or disasters??

Last month I communicated two papers. Two more papers are ready. I am waiting for the permission from my boss to post them. It’s the worst time. A time of incubation; when all the hard work of last 5 years will be judged through these papers.

It reminds me some mails that I exchanged with one of my friend few months back. One night he wrote me a mail. It was like this:

He was preparing for his professional exams while sitting on his bed. The table lamp was kept on the bed. All on a sudden he realized that the bed sheet had caught fire from the heat of the light of the table lamp. So he was amazed. He saw such an incident for the first time.


So I shot back a mail immediately to him. It was like this:

Ok, you do a few things. First, look into literature databases to know whether some one has already published such incident or not. Then you change the bed sheet of different colors but made up of same material. Then check, whether they are catching fire or not. Then use bed sheets of different materials. Try the same thing. Again do the experiments with various types of lamps and with varying exposure time. Repeat all those experiments at least thrice. Then jot down the data. Do factor analysis or cluster analysis which one you find suitable. Dig out the statistically significant observations. Then write down the whole story in a scientific paper format. Let your friends (?) read it and scratch your back. Then send it to a journal.

Now you wait. Wait another month. Mean while you can open your author account every day, just to make your day ugly. Then on an auspicious day, you get the reply from the editor with referee’s comments. And the fun begins now. One referee has raised really good questions. You get stimulated. You can even write down a new grant application based on this idea.

But hey! Wait. Read the comments of the second referee. He has asked, what happens if you spread cow dung over a bed sheet and then keep it bellow a lamp? Now you are in soup. Where does this cow dung come from? You scratch your head. Got agitated, then depressed. Any way, after two three days you start exploring the literature databases. This time your search command is: Cow dung AND bed sheet. Pfuuuuu….. After three four days of toil you write down all the answers to referees comment and re-write the whole paper a bit. And then re-submit it. Now pray again. Pray early in the morning and even before you go to sleep. If you are lucky you may get the article published just before your next promotion.

So it got published. And you are happy and excited. In the evening you ring up your girl friend and break the news: honey I have got a publication. Her reply: “so what?”
You cannot help. When rape is inevitable enjoy it.



Hey I don’t say that; neither the story. HA HA HA!!!!