[Todos] Se murio Vicentini

[fvicent en dm.uba.ar]

A la Comunidad de Exactas

Lamento comunicarles el deceso del Dr Fabio Vicentini,
renombrado docente-investigador que se destacó porque
nunca en su puta vida publicó un paper. Mientras el profesor
Pablo Jacovkis prepara el obituario yo les adelanto las noticias
que nos estan llegando desde la puerta del Cielo por la cadena
CBS (Celestial Broadcasting System)

Jorge Aliaga
Decano
===========================
Vic: My gosh is this…? Are you…? Am I really…?

St Peter: Yes, I’m St Peter. And yes, this is where souls such
as yours enter heaven.

Vic: Wow. I mean, I didn’t expect to live forever, but still,
this is something of a shock. (Pauses.) OK, I guess I can live
with it. Uh, I mean …

St Peter: I know.

Vic: Well, at least I’m here. I’m not thrilled to be dead, but
it’s a relief to know I’m going to heaven.

St Peter: I’m afraid it’s not that simple. We have to check.

Vic: Check what?

St Peter: Your life history. (He leafs through the enormous
book.) It’s all here, you know.

Vic: I’m sure it is. I can imagine you guys keep records that
make PubMed seem like a stack of index cards. I’m a little
surprised you don’t use something more up-to-date, though.

St Peter: If you mean a personal computer, no - we don’t.
After all, they were invented elsewhere.

Vic: You mean on earth?

St Peter: No, somewhere a lot warmer. (He stops at a
page.) Here you are.

Vic: Hey, I’m not worried. I was a good scientist, a good
citizen, a good family man, I think, too. I never…

St Peter: Yes, yes, I’m sure, but you see, none of that
matters. The only thing that matters is your IF.

Vic: IF?

St Peter: Your impact factor. That’s all we use now. If your
IF is above 10, then you enter here. If it’s lower, well…

Vic: My impact factor? What the hell - oops, sorry - is that?

St Peter: It’s something we borrowed from your science
chaps on earth. Now when anyone comes here, all we do
is to look up his number.

Vic: A single number? Are you nuts? You can’t sum up
someone’s whole life in a single number!

St Peter: You do. At least, you sum up their career that way,
when you decide if they’ve published in the best journals or
done the best work. It’s how you work out who gets
promoted and who’s a star and who gets funded and…

Vic: Yes, but it’s a terrible idea! We should never have done
it. It ruined European science in a matter of a few years, and
then it spread to Australia, China and Japan, and finally to
Canada and the US; and before too long, science was totally
controlled by unimaginative bureaucrats who just used that
number for everything. It was a disaster!

St Peter: Yes; but it’s a lot simpler. It doesn’t matter if you were
kind or tried hard or did good work or were pious or modest
or generous. The only thing that matters is how big an
impact we calculate you had.

Vic: But that’s just wrong! Look, maybe I could talk to the
people who thought up that idea and pushed for its use. If I
can just get in for a minute…

St Peter: Oh, they’re not here. (He waves his hand and an
image appears on a cloud. It shows a huge pit of boiling
sulfur and brimstone. In it, up almost to their necks, are a
bunch of men in business suits.) As you can see, they’re in a
warmer climate.

Vic: Well, at least, that seems fair somehow. Wait a minute -
is that George W Bush?

St Peter: Yes.

Vic: But his impact factor should have been huge.

St Peter: Oh, the absolute value was off the charts. But we
do take the sign into consideration…

Vic: Then why is he only in brimstone up to his knees?

St Peter: Oh. He’s standing on Dick Cheney’s shoulders.
(The image vanishes.) Now let’s get back to you…

Vic: But don’t you see, the idea that you can determine
someone’s impact in the future from where they publish today
is totally absurd. On that basis, God would have an impact
factor of zero. I mean, He did his best work a long time ago; it
has never been repeated by anyone; and all His ideas were
published in a book, not in a peer-reviewed journal!

St Peter: Very funny. Go to hell.