Science… from… space!
I love Retraction Watch. Sure, most of the time it depresses me, such as when they’re delving into the dirt under the bottom of the barrel of scientific misconduct, but sometimes there’s just pure comedy gold like this retracted article from Applied Mathematics Letters.
I’ll skip over the actual issues with the math in the paper (which is nowhere near my area of expertise) to focus instead on this gem of wisdom from the Discussion section:
Both science and spirituality came from space. Science is based on equations and experiments whereas spirituality relies on beliefs. The spirituality promises that everything in this universe was created in pairs but in opposites. For example, origin and end, man and women, light and dark, day and night, sorrow and pleasure, loss and gain, God and devil, ugly and beauty, good and bad and so on. Similarly, possible and impossible are consistent in mathematics.
Sure, I’ve seen some oddball outbursts buried in the conclusions of research articles before, but I dare you – DARE you – to read that excerpt without automatically mentally plugging in the sound of somebody taking a massive bong hit at the end. Wow.
But really, go read the whole post.