layout: post
title: ways to enhance development
category: self
tags: intro
year: 2014
month: 5
day: 20
published: true
summary: "('call the way on enhancement of development' is probably more accurate, insofar as etymology is concerned)"
---

Does no one ever read the supplementary methods? No, err, yes. Sometimes?

Every once in a great scientific while, an experiment resonates so strongly with a budding young scientist that he or she enthusiastically tears into the supplement with a vim and gusto that scream "isn't graduate school a sauce more awesome than any hitherto sampled?!"

It is a shame on par with the failure to grasp fundamental principles of philadelphonics that such passion rarely persists beyond the first few months of a scientific career - doe-eyed empirical tenacity once more giving way to an apathetic regard for reams upon  reams of supplementary methods, destined to haunt the empirical record(ish) until  the end of days (or until the last copy of some obsolete word processing software required by a forward-thinking publishing house disappears)...

There is a silver lining to this state of affairs. Like an empty chat window, supplementary methods can be a valuable tool in promoting the illusion of discourse. With a carefully tinted pair of glasses, authors can trick themselves into believing that someone out there may one day consume the fruits of earnest empirical labor, and thus achieve important academic goals like retroactively justifying countless hours crafting figures that didn't make the cut, providing a platform for thinly veiled passive-aggressive comments that reviewer 2 is unlikely to actually read, and inside jokes that are certain to remain hilarious for decades to come.

For those times when there just isn't enough room to explain, when it seems like no one else cares about the technical minutia that increasingly occupy your life, when it's clear that you should be doing more important things, you can always find a friend in [supplementary methods](https://wem3.github.io/supplementary.methods).



