Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects
Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects
[A tournament bracket tree is shown with 16 scientific effect names, with 8 on the left and 8 on the right side. From both sides toward the middle the brackets reduce from eight to four, to two, then to one line where the latter join to a rectangle in the middle for the winners name of the final match. Above the bracket there is a title:] Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects
[Left side:] YORP effect Nocebo effect
Woozle effect Stroop effect
Pockels effect Cheerios effect
Hot chocolate effect Perky effect
[Right side:] Bouba/kiki effect Cutaneous rabbit effect
Small firm effect Little Parks effect
Dr. Fox effect Oddity effect
Butterfly effect Popcorn effect
The first wave ran from April 25, 2022 at 5:19pm ET to the next day at 5:42pm ET.
The second wave started on April 26, 2022 at 5:56pm ET and ended around 11:56am ET.
The third wave started on April 27, 2022 at 6:54pm ET and ended around 12:54pm ET.
The fourth wave started on April 28, 2022 at 4:30pm ET and ended around 10:30pm ET.

Randall has compiled yet another single-elimination tournament bracket for a knock-out competition, by public vote, between 16 different scientific effect names that he seems to consider worthy of being cute-sounding.
As of the release day, he is determining the result in a series of Twitter polls . These results are shown here .
See below for explanations for what each of the 16 effects are.
Several unrelated scientific effects were previously combined in 1531: The BDLPSWDKS Effect , which also included the Stroop effect (the last S).
In the title text, Randall coins the term "Stroop-YORP number" as a count of how many 'casual' references a future publication can sneak into it from the 16 finalist names for cutest effect. It specifies that it should be without the word effect after the words (sans 'effect').
Tongue-in-cheek 'counting scores' are familiar in the likes of the Erdős and Bacon numbers, both of which are referenced by 599: Apocalypse (the latter only in the title text). In these cases the ideal is to get the lowest number, whereas here higher is better. The cross-field hybrid Erdős–Bacon number is one in which the desired score is the lowest sum of both values (neither being undefinable) by dint of having participated in both arenas of respective achievement, but not necessarily (or practically) in a single combined presentation.
For instance the Stroop-YORP number could be high for a wildlife paper. That could possibly use "butterfly" and "rabbit" (possibly needing the latter to be specifically 'cutaneous', to count), which may both be found in "little parks" with some "popcorn" seen littered around without too much "oddity"; and of course a (Dr.?) "fox" could be in the area, getting a score of 6. But other words may be a stretch, with an imaginative reference to a "woozle" possibly easier to employ than to evoke anything of the "nocebo".
On the other hand, for a space-science paper there may be more obvious (mis)uses for physics-related terms, and mentioning YORP might well be expected. But it may need creative thinking to introduce the rabbit or the more psychological idea of Stroopicity, etc, without reason to discuss the responses of animal or human payloads being sent there.
It is not actually obvious whether Randall intends the score to only be valid if the insertions are off-field and/or undetected, such as when someone is wagered that they can slip unrelated song lyrics or a 'hello' to Jason Isaacs into a public speech without the rest of the audience twigging.
A search of google scholar indicates many articles with a score of 2 (e.g. this paper , which refers to butterfly shaped popcorn), but 3 or more seems to not be attested.
YORP effect The YORP effect is the effect of sunlight on an asteroid with variations of shape and/or albedo, which can increase its rotation rate and/or modify its axis of rotation. It can cause objects to eventually spin apart or drastically change their orbit. It is an acronym of the names Yarkovsky, O’Keefe, Radzievskii and Paddack, who were instrumental in its discovery. More than a century ago, Yarkovsky determined that heat applied to a symmetrical rotating body would be asymmetrically re-emitted and apply a small but continuous thrust, and this was added to by considering the forces to non-symmetrical bodies. Nocebo effect An effect in which a recipient of medication who believes that it will have negative side-effects is more likely to experience those negative side-effects, whether they can be really caused by the medication or not. Opposite of the placebo effect , which focuses on positive side-effects that arise beyond the true efficacy of a given treatment. Nocēbō is Latin for “I shall harm”, coined to oppose placēbō , “I shall please”. Woozle effect If a study gets repeatedly cited and otherwise disseminated, then people will start to believe it regardless of whether it has any evidence behind it. And if there is not  any evidence, it becomes an urban myth. Named after a Winnie-the-Pooh story in which Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet try to catch an imaginary animal called a woozle, and accidentally follow their own tracks in circles. A similar effect was discussed in 978: Citogenesis , wherein a sourceless statement on Wikipedia can become apparently credible via simple repetition. Stroop effect The Stroop effect (referenced in 1531: The BDLPSWDKS Effect ) is a psychological phenomenon in which it is easier to name the visual color of a word when the word refers to its own color, than when the word refers to a different color; i.e. the fact that saying that Red is red is easier than to say that Blue is green. Named after John Ridley Stroop . Pockels effect A phenomenon where an electric field passed through a medium can cause the medium's refractive index to depend upon the polarization and propagation direction of the refracted light, a property known as birefringence . Named after Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels . Cheerios effect A phenomenon where objects floating in a liquid appear to attract or repel each other. Named after the cereal Cheerios, which are an everyday demonstration of this phenomenon because many eat Cheerios in a bowl of milk. Hot chocolate effect A phenomenon where the sound created by tapping a cup of hot liquid rises in pitch as a soluble powder is added. Perky effect An experiment in which participants were asked to visualize an object while staring at a screen on which the outline of that object was subtly projected. Participants believed the projected shape to be only a product of their imaginations. Named after Cheves Perky . Bouba/kiki effect An observation that people, despite different native languages, will relatively consistently assign names with certain sounds to blobby or spiky shapes, suggesting the association of sound and shape is non-arbitrary. Bouba and kiki were two of the words used in the experiment. Cutaneous rabbit effect A phenomenon where, when tapped on one part of the body in rapid succession and then switching to another, the subject feels the tapping at locations in between the two. For example, if rapidly tapping the wrist then switching to the elbow, the subject will subjectively feel as if they are being tapped at progressive intervals between the wrist and elbow, when they are not. Small firm effect An economic theory that small firms usually perform better than larger ones Little–Parks effect A phenomenon where a fluctuating magnetic field passed through a superconductor can slightly suppress its superconductivity, inducing small fluctuations in its electrical resistance. When juxtaposed against the "small firm effect", as in the bracket, one might get the impression that it is somehow related to urban architecture or civil engineering. Dr. Fox effect A disputed theory that student evaluations of their teachers are likely unreliable, because they are largely based on the teacher's charisma instead of the quality of their content. Oddity effect A theory that when fish assemble in shoals (large social groups), any that stand out appearance-wise will be attacked by a predator, explaining why shoals tend to have similar-looking members. Butterfly effect The butterfly effect is the sensitivity of chaotic systems to small changes in initial conditions. The weather system of Earth is chaotic, and so an arbitrarily small change in air patterns (such as could be caused by the flapping of a butterfly's wing) could ultimately change the weather for the whole world. Popcorn effect A phenomenon exhibited by crushed ore placed on a vibrating screen for separation in mineral processing, in which larger particles tend to bounce higher than smaller particles.
[A tournament bracket tree is shown with 16 scientific effect names, with 8 on the left and 8 on the right side. From both sides toward the middle the brackets reduce from eight to four, to two, then to one line where the latter join to a rectangle in the middle for the winners name of the final match. Above the bracket there is a title:] Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects
[Left side:] YORP effect Nocebo effect
Woozle effect Stroop effect
Pockels effect Cheerios effect
Hot chocolate effect Perky effect
[Right side:] Bouba/kiki effect Cutaneous rabbit effect
Small firm effect Little Parks effect
Dr. Fox effect Oddity effect
Butterfly effect Popcorn effect
The first wave ran from April 25, 2022 at 5:19pm ET to the next day at 5:42pm ET.
The second wave started on April 26, 2022 at 5:56pm ET and ended around 11:56am ET.
The third wave started on April 27, 2022 at 6:54pm ET and ended around 12:54pm ET.
The fourth wave started on April 28, 2022 at 4:30pm ET and ended around 10:30pm ET.
