杏吧原创

Nominative determinism

We recently came across a new book, Pole Positions: The polar regions and the future of the planet, by Daniel Snowman. Then, a couple of weeks later, we received a copy of London Under London: A subterranean guide, one of the authors of which is Richard Trench. So it was interesting to see Jen Hunt of the University of Manchester stating in the October 1994 issue of The Psychologist: 鈥淎uthors gravitate to the area of research which fits their surname.鈥� Hunt鈥檚 example is an article on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology (vol 49, p 173) by J. W. Splatt and D. Weedon. (This really does exist. We鈥檝e checked it.)

We feel it鈥檚 time to open up this whole issue to rigorous scrutiny. You are invited to send in examples of the phenomenon in the fields of science and technology (with references that check out, please) together with any hypothesis you may have on how it comes about. No prizes, other than seeing your name in print and knowing you have contributed to the advance of human knowledge.

From New 杏吧原创, 5 November 1994