The Other Dylanologists

Five Swedish scientists are competing to see who can sneak the most Bob Dylan references into their publications. Scott Neuman has more:

As Sweden’s edition of The Local reports, it all started back in 1997, when John Jundberg and Eddie Weitzburg, two professors from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, published an article on flatulence titled “Nitric Oxide and inflammation: The answer is blowing in the wind.” … A few years later, two others scientists, Jonas Frisen and Konstantinos Meletis, picked up the riff in a research paper on the ability of non-neural cells to generate neurons, which they called “Blood on the Tracks: A Simple Twist of Fate” …

That’s when, The Local says, a librarian spotted the Frisen and Meletis article and pointed it out to Jundberg and Weitzburg. The four scientists decided to make a bet: Whoever could squeeze the most Dylan song references into articles before retirement gets a free lunch at a restaurant in Solna, north of Stockholm, where the university is based. A fifth inductee, Kenneth Chien, a professor of cardiovascular research, joined the group when the four others discovered his classic title: “Tangled up in blue: Molecular cardiology in the postmolecular era.”

The Guardian says: “With five competing rivals, the pace of Dylan references accelerated: Lundberg and Weitzberg’s “The Biological Role of Nitrate and Nitrite: The Times They Are a-Changin’,” in 2009; “Eph Receptors Tangled Up in Two” in 2010; “Dietary Nitrate – A Slow Train Coming,” in 2011.”