Q: What is NCBI? (and for that matter, what is ROFL?)
A: The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the United States National Library of Medicine, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. The NCBI houses a number of databases including PubMed, an extensive index of biomedical research articles.
ROFL is an internet acronym that means “Rolling On the Floor Laughing”.
Q: Who are you people?
A: We’re a couple of UC Berkeley Molecular and Cell Biology grad students who work in the same lab. We think we’re funny.
Q: Didn’t the article from [insert post name here] win an IgNobel prize in [insert year here] ?
A: To keep our content fresh, we do not go directly to the IgNobel prize website when looking for ROFLs. However, we also don’t make an effort to exclude them, so occasionally we overlap, either because we independently found the same article or because it was sent to us by a reader. We never claimed to be the first to read these articles (they were peer-reviewed, after all!)–we’re just posting what makes us laugh.
Q: Why didn’t my submission get used?
A: We prefer to use articles with abstracts. We also try to vary our content so as not to descend into complete raunchiness (except on the newly established Penis Fridays!), but we may be saving your article for later.
Q: Why so much potty humor?
A: Because it is funny. If you don’t think so, you probably need therapy because you are repressed. Seek help.
