Worm Runners on the Run

Among the fast-proliferating journals that report on assorted scientific specialties, few are even remotely comprehensible to the average layman. And many a literate scientist admits to being all but stupefied by their jargon-filled contents. One notable exception among such somber publications is the sprightly Worm Runner's Digest, which serves up its well-edited and important scientific papers along with side dishes of humorous satires, poems and cartoons.

Now even the seven-year-old Digest has had to retreat before the tide of scientific conformity. Beginning next year, its editor announced last week, the name of the Digest will be the Journal of Biological Psychology.

Proud of It. The original choice of title was not made lightly, says Psychologist-Editor James McConnell, who heads the University of Michigan planarian (flatworm) research group, which publishes the W.R.D, "In psychological jargon," he explains, "those who experiment with rats are called 'rat runners,' and those who work with insects are called 'bug runners.' So we are 'worm runners'--and we're proud of it." Not enough scientists dig McConnell's logic--or humor. Some will not publish their work in a journal with so frivolous a name. Editors of other psychological journals refuse to allow their contributors to make any reference, however valid, to the W.R.D. "We even had trouble with librarians," says McConnell. "Many of them will not order journals with odd names for their science sections." The new name, he hopes, will make the old W.R.D. more acceptable to the entire scientific community.

Such acceptance, to be sure, has already been earned. A 1961 W.R.D. article by McConnell's students was the first to report that memory could be inherited by one planarian from another; it started the current controversy about the role of the RNA molecule in the transfer of memory and learning. The Digest later published the first complete account of the original study of memory transfer in a higher animal, the rat. It also reported the first study of behavioral changes in plants--experiments in which the tropical mimosa was actually "taught" to change its response to specific stimuli.

Healthy Disrespect. In its early editions, the W.R.D. offered a generous mixture of serious articles and scientific humor. Then, after receiving a particularly indignant letter from a famous scientist who complained that he had read most of a "technical" report before recognizing it as satire, McConnell decided to make a more obvious separation between types of articles. Humorous contributions are now printed upside down in the back half of the W.R.D. (or right side up in the front half, if you happen to open it from the back), along with a topsy-turvy back cover. This repositioning has caused at least one librarian to complain that her issue was improperly bound and to ask for a replacement copy.

McConnell vows that he will retreat no farther in his battle with the conformists. The new Journal of Biological Psychology will still contain an upside-down humor section and a back cover with Worm Runner's Digest printed defiantly across it. "It seems to me," says the embattled psychologist, "that anyone who takes himself or his work too seriously is in a perilous state of mental health. I believe that the Digest is proof that a great many scientists can appreciate humor even when it's pointed at their own life's work, and that a scientist can be both half-serious and half-wit."

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