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Bringing Wit and
Wisdom To Epidemiology--AGAIN
New Haiku Contest
To Focus On Impact Of The Pandemic On Epidemiology And Epidemiologists
$1,000 In Cash
Prizes
Webster’s Dictionary
defines haiku as “an unrhymed Japanese poetic form that consists of 17
syllables arranged in three lines containing five, seven, and five
syllables, respectively. A haiku expresses much and suggests more in
the fewest possible words.”
The Epidemiology
Monitor first sponsored a haiku contest in 2016. The purpose of that
contest was to elicit haikus which best captured the methods or
purposes of epidemiology. More than 200 readers selected their
favorite haikus (see reprint this month of the August 2016 newsletter
with the winning haikus).
New Contest
This month we are
launching a second haiku contest to capture the changes and challenges
brought to epidemiology and/or to epidemiologists as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic. The field and the profession have never been such a
prominent part of national and international conversations. Our
contest seeks to capture the insights which epidemiologists have
garnered about the positive and the negative as a result of this
unprecedented attention. This is a chance to share the insights from
your lessons learned in the pandemic.
Cash Prizes
The winner for the
best entry will receive a $500 cash prize, and second and their place
winners will receive $300 and $200 respectively. All entries become
the exclusive property of the newsletter. The deadline for submission
is April 30, 2022. Send your entries to
editor@epimonitor.net
There is no limit to the number of entries
allowed. In the event that two haikus are very similar, the earliest
one submitted will receive priority consideration. All decisions made
by our panel of judges will be final. Be the first to submit at
editor@epimonitor.net
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Abridged Reprint
August 2016
Haiku Contest
Winners
Francois Theriault,
a second year PhD student in the School of Epidemiology, Public
Health, and Preventive Medicine at the University of Ottawa is the
winner of our popular haiku contest and a $300 cash prize. He
submitted a single haiku and received more than double the number of
first place ranks compared to the nearest competitors. His winning
haiku by this wide margin is:
Silent fall of tears
Wasted grant and squandered youth
P of point o six
When asked to comment
on his inspiration for the winning haiku, Theriault told the Monitor
“I am often frustrated with the importance attributed to arbitrary
p-value cut-offs. This frustration was the main inspiration for my
haiku. I tried to capture the absurdity and angst of the precise,
deflating moment when researchers realize that their findings fall
just short of an arbitrary cut-off for statistical significance, and
that few people will consequently be interested in their results.”
2nd Place Winner:
Egg salad, stuffed ham
Hot sun, cool shade, eat and play
Outbreak tomorrow
3rd Place Winner:
Disease detective
Searching for a cause and cure
Alas, no funding
Other haikus which
garnered the most votes were:
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With
Snow in pursuit
Of pump handle causation
A science is born |
Preventable deaths
Epi curves will save the world
If funding follows |
Confounded no more
Perhaps association
Reveals causation
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Genies
grant wishes
But poor epi researchers
Wish for grants instead
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“Association’
Be sure not to confuse this
Word with “causation”
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Disease shed data
Epidemiology
Spreads understanding
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Disease within few
Provides us with the insight
To prevent in more |
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