Science babies

When I go to the movies, I sit to the very end. The last frame. I do this because I love love love it when filmmakers put little Easter eggs at the end of the credits, and because I love film music, and I just think, darnit, these people worked hard and someone should see their names on the big screen.

The last few years, something I’ve seen more of in the end credits of movies are “Production babies.” It’s the names of babies had by staffers during the production of the movie. Pixar pioneered the practice with Toy Story in 1995.

We should do this in scientific papers. Routinely. Put a mention of it in the acknowledgements section. Editors usually give authors a fair amount of freedom to thank whoever they want.

There’s a lot of talk and research about how families affect academic careers, especially scientific ones (“For men, having children is a career advantage. For women, it’s a career killer”). Listing “science babies” born during the making of a scientific paper might be a way to show in the research community that having children is not only normal, but worth celebrating.

External links

Pixar delivers, babies get credit