Fake fangs fail

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How tubular venom-conducting fangs are formed.

Elapids, viperids, and some other groups of colubroid snakes have tubular fangs for the conduction of venom into their prey. The literature describing the development of venom-conducting fangs provides two contradictory accounts of fang development. Some studies claim that the venom canal forms by the infolding of a deep groove along the surface of the tooth to produce an enclosed canal. In oth...

Fake!

Received: 3 October 2005 Accepted: 3 October 2005 One of my most memorable experiences with Claudio occured in Cleveland about 10 years ago. I was serving as department chair, and had organized a semester long research seminar, bringing one great scholar in for a full week, every week of the term. During their week in residence, the visitors would give two seminars and meet informally with facu...

Viper fangs: functional limitations of extreme teeth.

The fangs of vipers are extremely long, rotating, hollow teeth. Analysis of video records of more than 750 strikes recorded at 60 or 250 frames per second for 285 individuals representing 86 species in 31 genera shows that vipers reposition fangs after initial contact with prey in more than a third of the strikes. Repositioning resulted when fangs missed prey entirely or hit prey regions that d...

Fake Variables in research

In each journal, the editorial board receives many articles but more than 70% of them are rejected. This happens because there is no real correlation among the variables in these articles or the variables and perceived relations are fake, which means playing with the variables nonexistent in reality. This rejection occurs mainly as a result of the researchers' misinterpretation of the interdisc...