Aim Higher

Short version: If you pay $35 to an academic journal to get past the paywall, all of the money goes to the journal, none to the researchers who wrote the paper, but you are 100% allowed to email the researchers and ask them to send you a copy of the paper, which they will do happily.

I don't usually talk about popular culture on this website, but The Sheep Detectives just did one of the most original takes on neurodivergence I've seen in my life.

For background, the movie is about a group of sheep who take it upon themselves to solve the murder of their beloved shepherd (Hugh Jackman).

In the world of this movie, sheep have the ability to deliberately forget any information or experience. We see the characters do this with experiences that are too painful, frightening, or confusing. This type of forgetting can range from harmless to deadly depending on which memories they discard.

The ram Mopple, voiced by Chris O'Dowd, cannot do this. This is not merely disability-coded; it is stated outright: "He was born with an affliction. He cannot choose to forget." There is an important part of Mopple's culture in which he cannot participate, and he was born with the reason why not.

As Mopple trots along after protagonist Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the audience is invited to see the significance of this: Mopple remembers unpleasant arguments and conflicts that could help them find the murderer's motive. When two sheep take shelter in what turns out to be a slaughterhouse, Mopple recognizes the danger first, giving them time to get away.

Scientists have speculated that gay and lesbian humans exist in the population because, in ancient cultures, fully realized adults who produce food but do not reproduce increases the survival rates of their siblings' and cousins' children. Similarly, people speculate that not everyone in the band needs to be hyper-aware of every sound and smell or obsessively recall the exact shade of yellow-green in every poisonous plant. One person hears the twig snap, and that's enough. In this film, Mopple not only provides neurodivergent representation, he hammers down this point: Because he can't, his flock does.

Another character, rescue sheep Sebastian (Bryan Cranston at his most cantankerous), is capable of losing memories but chooses not to. He retains all of his violent backstory because he considers forgetting it an injustice to the people who helped him escape. Though he may not be aware of it, the experiences give him both courage and compassion.

Mopple keeps his memories because of a genetic crap shoot, but, to Sebastian, remembering is a choice. In all non-emergency situations, Mopple expends noticeable energy downplaying his difference to keep the other sheep from feeling uncomfortable. Sebastian treats forgetting with contempt and confronts the flock when they let go of meaningful experiences.

Through the film, it is usually Sebastian, not the unassuming Mopple, who goads the other sheep to action and points out the value of difficult memories, but it is more often Mopple who uses those memories effectively.

The movie is called The Sheep Detectives, with the plural S anchoring the point. Lily does not solve George's murder on her own. Nearly every member of the flock contributes something to finding the killer. By the end, it's neither Mopple nor Sebastian who takes pride of place. The crisis of the day needed both of them.

One of the things I like about English is that, although any given context has right and wrong, what is considered right and wrong changes across situations and over time. I’ve compared it to wearing a bathing suit to the beach but not to address the U.N. …or UN.

Responsible style guide teams keep things updated. This year, the American Medical Association’s Manual of Style released new guidance for discussing people of different ages and situations, drawing a distinction between what is correct vs. incorrect and what is merely preferred. Here are a few of my favorites:

Say “right hemisphere” instead of “right brain.” This may be because “right brain” has another meaning in popular culture, referring to the logical and thoughtful parts of an individual’s personality rather than the supposedly more artistic “left brain.” This is based on a since-debunked belief that creativity was physically located in the left hemisphere. Refer to people as “unhoused person” or “person experiencing homelessness” to minimize stigma. “Homelessness” is still acceptable when referring to the condition, as in “our city’s homelessness problem.” This is an example of person-first language.

Say “at the 6 o’clock position” instead of “at 6 o’clock.” This preserves the common English clock metaphor while minimizing the possibility that the reader will take it as an indicator of time. The endings “-ic”/”-ical,” as in “historic”/”historical” are dealer’s choice so long as each document is internally consistent. That means writers may use “a biological discovery of historical significance” but no mix and match.

I disagree with the AMA on one point. I’ve known enough autistic people to say no, it’s not always “person with autism.” Call the individual whatever they say to call them.

Stand Up for Science has provided a portal where members of the public can comment on the Office of Management and Budget’s new Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance, and you should do it. The goal is ten thousand independent comments from separate individuals before the period ends on July 13.

The new regulations, if passed, would require funded research to adhere to the current administration’s political agenda and would profoundly limit American scientists’ ability to collaborate research teams in other countries. I always thought of the scientific community as a transnational, human accomplishment.

I could talk about the specifics—it’s anti-DEI, anti-trans, claims PEPFAR was corrupt and promoted gender ideology (it saved people from AIDS)—but the core of it is that researchers would be required to choose a political conclusion first and then try to build their experiments around it rather than testing hypotheses and then acknowledging their findings.

Remember, when one administration takes power, the next administration almost never gives it up. When I first heard of the OMB’s new rules, I must have spent twenty minutes clicking around the federal site before I found exactly where to lodge my opinion, and Stand Up for Science has simplified the process a lot. But if you don’t want to go through them, click on my second link below and tell the American government what to do directly.

*https://fight2win.standupforscience.net/campaign/163675/

*https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance

When victrolas and other music players were first introduced, they weren’t very good. As the technology improved, they slowly replaced live performances in many but not all situations. We still have live orchestras and live bands even though most of the music we listen to on a daily basis is recorded. Players also made it possible to listen to music in situations in that were never practical with…

I’m in the 19-range of my beginning-to-end read of the AMA Manual of Style, and I find my throughhiking metaphor still holds up. Not only am I walking through places that a section hiker might not find worth the time (charts, vocabulary lists), but my pace and milage are heavily affected by outside factors.Because the point of the exercise is to earn points for my certification maintenance, I’ve…

I like my metaphor of through-hiking the AMA Manual of Style. The point of reading Big Blue beginning to end isn’t to memorize everything I see along the way. It’s that the act of doing it is inherently different from reading one section as needed or looking up individual issues as they arise. The AT does not always hit the best hiking in the states through which it passes (Bill Bryson commented…

This year, I decided to earn some of my BELS maintenance points by brute force: An epic reread of the AMA Manual of Style. For my hiking readers, this is like doing an AT Northbound but with copyright law and specialized punctuation rules instead of Springer, Washington, and Katahdin. Like with an Appalachian backpacking trip, I’ve set reasonable daily goals, staying hydrated, and probably eating more Cliff bars than is good for me. But if any of my fellow ELS feel that a beginning-to-end take on AMA is not for them, allow me to recommend a Presidential Traverse. This may be more practical given that BELS only allows us to apply three hours of self-directed study per year to our maintenance scores. (AMA 11 is over 1100 pages long. I do not feel shy about saying that it is taking me more than three hours.) If you're section-hiking the AMA this year, just do chapter 11: Correct and Preferred Usage. Some of its content, like eliminanting redundancy and handling frequently misused medical terms, holds more or less steady over the years. Other parts, however, handle terminology for LGBTQ individuals (AMA prefers "transgender woman" and "transgender man" to "transwoman" and "transman," for example) and other matters that the current administration has instructed Federal agencies to change. Not all hikers like switchbacks or rock slides, and, even among editors, reading a style guide isn't everyone's favorite thing to do, but—unusually—this part of our profession is making the mainstream news. That could help editors maintain focus as they put one foot in front of the other.

Live editors can find the gold test stone. Right now, LLM AI can’t. Much of my time as a scientific editor and proofreader has focused on authors who speak English as a subsequent language.* Given that the people who hire proofreaders are usually the ones who need them, I often find myself looking at a strange or colorful turn of phrase that needs something closer to translation. I was working for GenScript as a W2 employee and I didn't mind occasionally helping out other parties when my boss handed me their copy. At the bottom of one page, the text assured the reader that this technique was the gold test stone in the industry. "Gold test stone"? What's "gold test stone," I wondered. There were plenty of plausible explanations. It could have been industry jargon. My boss and many of his friends were Chinese. What if it was a Mandarin idiom, and what would be the best way to modify it for an English-speaking audience? The right answer came to me at once. Gold standard. The drafter had been trying to say "gold standard." Mentally, I experienced it as a leap, like the one Barbara McClintock described when she first visualized the jumper gene. My connection may not have been Nobel-worthy, but I've had to do it over and over, and it's become a skill. My fellow editors, please comment with your own gold test stone. When did you have to intuit the client's meaning, and how did you confirm that you were right? *I don't want to say "English as a second language" because sometimes it is third or fourth.