Entomology, chemical ecology, evidence-based environmentalism and science in general. I like big bugs and I cannot lie.

Thursday 15 January 2009

Spellcheck no substitute for brain

Ok people, your pub quiz fact for today is that a fly's digestive system has three parts, imaginatively named the foregut, midgut and hindgut. Now I realise that Word's spellcheck can do some funny things when confronted with scientific terminology, but you'd have thought this wouldhave been picked up in the peer review:

From "Some Aspects of Epidemiology of Filth Flies"

The only known existing literature in different parts of Nigeria is that of Dipeolu and Ojo (Adeyeba and Okpala 2000, Dipeolu and Ojo 1975), who isolated several genera of bacteria, some of which are pathogenic to man in Nigeria. These were isolated from the dissected midgets, and appendages of M. domestica vicina and M. domestica caught from refuse dumps in various public places in Ibadan.
Of course if it turns out that Adeyeba and Okpala did in fact isolate pathogenic bacteria by cutting up very small people then I shall apologise unreservedly.

P.S. No more cockroaches spotted yet

1 comment:

Imogen said...

I do love spellchecks! - this made me laugh so much my tummy hurts (though admittedly I had a large lunch).