The etiquette of acknowledgements and the importance of stupidity are discussed and dissected.

The tricky subject of acknowledgements in journal articles is raised by FemaleScienceProfessor (http://tinyurl.com/cfuq8v). She outlines some thorny problems to consider when drafting those brief final words that appear at the end of practically every paper. Did anyone influence the research, but not contribute enough to be a full co-author? Should you thank anonymous reviewers? Should you try to gratuitously shoe-horn in 'a bunch of famous people who are aware I exist'? And what if you thank people who don't want to be mentioned? Aside from Mark P, who wanted to thank the Lindt chocolate company for “greatly enhancing his graduate work”, most people commenting didn't think thanking anonymous reviewers was particularly useful — and most of them were commenting anonymously too! Although a few people said they weren't bothered by being thanked when they didn't feel they really deserved it, the crucial point was raised that this could be done to avoid them being used as a reviewer — sneaky.

At The Chemistry Blog (http://tinyurl.com/dxwwdw), Boyie picks up on an essay 'The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research' published in Journal of Cell Science (121, 1771; 2008). Apart from allowing people to breathe a secret sigh of relief, if you don't feel stupid occasionally you're not picking the right research problems, you're not working hard enough to get stupefying results or you don't really understand enough! So unless you feel stupid, you're being stupid in another way. The Chemist (from blog My Chemical Journey, http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com) reminded readers of James Watson “saying that breakthroughs are sometimes owed to 'the principle sloppiness [sic]' to get non-reproducible results”. So, if you're feeling sloppy and stupid today, phone the Nobel Prize Committee: your big breakthrough might be round the corner!