"Types of Lymphoma Papers"

I hesitate to post this, because it's pretty much the nerdiest thing I can post. You may not enjoy it as much as I did. But I proudly call myself a Cancer Nerd, so here goes.

There's an online comic strip called XKCD that makes humor out of science. They often use science as a way of making commentary about politics or society. They have made lots of comics lately about Covid-19, and especially about the frustrations that come when people don't believe in science. 

(I'm going to assume that everyone reading this is pro-science, given what I write about.)

Anyway, a few days ago, XKCD created a comic called "Types of Scientific Papers." It's basically making fun of how very few different kinds of science research articles get written. The details of the research are all very different (and important), but they all seem to fall into a few basic categories. Things like:

• "My Colleague is Wrong and I Can Finally Prove It"
• "What Are Fish Even Doing Down There"
• "Check Out This Weird Thing One of Us Saw While Out for a Walk"
• "We Scanned Some Undergraduates"
  

If you read enough scientific papers, you'll get the joke pretty easily. If you don't read a lot of them -- hey, I warned you that you might not enjoy it as much as I did.

But what I enjoyed even more was Dr. John Leonard's version of all of this. Dr. Leonard is a Lymphoma Rock Star who does research, teaches medical students, and sees patients (including at least one of you readers). He's made a few appearances in the Lympho Bob blog, including the Leonard List of 10 presentations that excite him every year at the ASH conference every December.

Dr. Leonard decided to create his own version of the XKCD comic called "Types of Lymphoma Papers":

Again, if you've read enough of these, you see the humor (and I probably read 2 or 3 medical journal articles about Lymphoma or cancer every week).

Some of my favorites from Dr. Leonard's revised comic:

• "Our Version of IPI, FLIPI, MIPI"
• "How to Cure Lymphoma in a Mouse"
  
• "R-CHOP + X"
• "A New 'Chemo-Free" Regimen
• "Our CAR-T Cells are Better than Your CAR-T Cells"
  

But my favorite has to be "Our BTK Inhibitor (PI3K Inhibitor) is Better than Other BTK Inhibitors (PI3K Inhibitors)." Because, really, it seems like there's a new inhibitor undergoing FDA review every other week.

I'd add to Dr. Leonard's comic "There Might Be a Benefit to Maintenance, Or Maybe Not" and "Watching and Waiting Isn't Worth It, Or Maybe It Is."

It's the same joke as the XKCD comic -- the deatils change, but we see the same basic kinds of research articles over and over again. 

As I said, the Cancer Nerd in me finds all of this very funny. 

Bit it says a lot about how science works -- slowly, incrementally, building on what has come before, little by little. There are very few truly groundbreaking, original ideas out there. It took about 20 years for Obinutuzumab to come around as an improvement over Rituxan. And we've has 4 different PI3K inhibitors approved for FL in the last few years.

And that's OK. Because when something new does come around, it gets studied and played with and improved on by lots of other researchers who see its great potential. And that's good for all of us.

In the meantime, I (and any other Cancer Nerds) can enjoy a little chuckle.

And if you didn't find it funny, I'll give you a little tease about my next post: Can Covid-19 actually cure Follicular Lymphoma?

(If you're too impatient to wait for an answer -- no, it probably can't. But there's a really interesting medical journal article about the possibility. I think it falls under XKCD's "The Immune System is at it again.")