Scientists get all sorts of prizes this time of year. Some win a Lasker. Others a Nobel or a Breakthrough Prize. The really lucky get a commemorative mug from PNAS.
But the members of the scientific community get no recognition. I’m not talking about the graduate students and postdocs who actually do the work. No. I’m talking about the creative geniuses at university press offices who toil every week to turn the soon-to-be-published papers of their researchers – no matter how pedestrian or replicative – into heartbreaking works of staggering science.
To show our appreciation for everything they do, we have decided to create a new prize just for them – which will henceforth be known as “The Pressies”, and are now accepting nominations in the following categories:
- Most Overhyped Science Story of the Year
- Most Egregious Failure to Cite Earlier Work
- Most Creative Use of the Term “Junk DNA” to Overhype a New Paper about non-coding DNA
- Lifetime Achievement Award
Please leave your nominations in the comments. Include a link to the press release and a few sentences describing why you think it deserves a 2013 Pressy. Finalists will be announced in two weeks followed by one week of open voting. Awardees will be announced in January.
We haven’t decided what the winners will get, but our press office assures us that this year’s recipients will get the most important prize in the history of prizes – the first time anyone has ever received a prize like this. Henceforth the field of prizes will never be the same.
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