Today’s updates in the Devil’s Dictionary

See the complete Devil’s Dictionary of Scientific Words and Phrases here.

enantiomer  a form of asymmetry which becomes obvious when a glove is put on the wrong hand, a shoe on the wrong foot, or an arm or leg is surgically reattached to the wrong side of the body, which happens more often than you would think, but which at least puts the glove or shoe back on the correct foot. In this case the gloves and shoes are still called enantiomers, but at least they’re the matching enantiomers. Most molecules are enantiomers, which gives them the same sort of problem with gloves. Human beings are not enantiomers, at least not in this dimension, unless you count your evil twin who lives in the mirror. This raises the fascinating philosophical question: if you could choose someone to be your enantiomer, whom would you pick?

 null hypothesis  a theory claiming that everything is nothing, or nothing is anything, or that nothingness pervades the universe, or would do so if the universe existed, but according to the null hypothesis it doesn’t, so what would there be to be filled with an infinite amount of nothingness? And does a system containing only nothingness obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Can the same volume hold different degrees of nothingness, which differ only in the density of nothingness against a background of nothingness, and if so can the nothingness in a system increase over time, or decrease, depending on how you see these things, to the point that eventually all the nothingness will be gone, and there will be nothing left at all, not even any nothingness?

potential drug target  something in a biological system that is not affected by any known drug and probably never will be.

sally forth  a more elegant way to say “go”, which should be used as often as possible in scientific papers.

If you like the Devil’s Dictionary, you will probably enjoy these older posts:

Searching for Oslo: a non-hypothesis-driven approach

Ontogeny recapitulates sobriety: from the Archaeal origins of life to the pinnacle of evolution: a PhD

Plus the other pieces in the categories “satire”, “science cabaret,” and “hilarious moments in science communication.” And there are, of course, many serious pieces on the site.

Feel free to pass along the link to your fellow science nerds! And, of course, quote the Devil’s Dictionary – just remember the reference! All material here is copyrighted Russ Hodge.