I saw a Tweet from a college classmate of mine – Jillian Buriak – that pointed me to this article from the Journal of Proteomics in January 2012.
Harry Belafonte and the secret proteome of coconut milk
And this is what one sees when one goes there:
A “Graphical Abstract” with the text “Here is your coconut woman, as perhaps envisioned by Harry Belafonte. For its proteome, though, have a look at the report inside!”. I guess this is an attempt at a joke about breasts and coconuts? And how is it appropriate for a scientific paper?
Want to guess about the gender balance of the people who run the journal? Here are the pics from the web site of the main executive editors and officials
Thoughts out there? Seems pretty inappropriate to me …
UPDATE 3/21 8 AM – Storifying Twitter comments
UPDATE 3/21 9:26 AM Elsevier says they will take down image but haven’t yet. Bonus – you can download a PPT slide of the brilliant image
UPDATE 3/21 9:34 AM
Some links of relevance
- Your daily dose of sexism (again) and #ProteomicsSexism (from the Lab and Field Blog)
- Maybe these graphical abstracts could be a little less graphic (from Neurodojo)
- Sexism charge hits proteomics journal — and you’ll see why …
- Everyday sexism and the price we pay for looking away
- Not how I wanted to spend spring break – The Drew Lab at Columbia …
- Still a few bugs in the system: So much science communication fail …
- Elsevier’s Junk Science – Shuttleworth Foundation
- bragg » Chemistry Blog
- Brain Stew