Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@gmail.com> wrote to sci.math:

Bill Dubuque wrote:

...

Google Books reports Kaplansky has classified rodent tumors http://books.google.com/books?q=kaplansky%27s+theorem+rodent

Kaplansky's Rat Theorem, of course, being that every projective module is a direct sum of countably generated projective modules. Scientists from both academia and industry in many countries have closely cooperated to arrive at a consensus on the descriptions of all the types of tumour and pre-neoplastic lesions encountered in laboratory rodents, and the applicability of projective modules to this consensus is, I hope, too obvious to need further elaboration.

I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised after hearing that Buell had applied Gauss' theory of binary quadratic forms to the treatment of brain tumors (see below). Alas, those old links are no longer so funny since they corrected part of the problem. But Buell's book "Binary Quadratic Forms" still does appear on many lists of brain tumor books, e.g. http://google.com/search?q="binary+quadratic+forms"+(oncology+OR+neoplasms) It's rather bizarre that both of these bloopers happen to be related to brain tumors. I discovered both purely by accident while searching on mathematical terms that had no medical connotations. --Bill Dubuque From: Bill Dubuque <wgd@nestle.ai.mit.edu> Date: 25 Sep 2002 18:21:43 -0400 Subject: Primary Quadratic Neoplasms Message-ID: <y8zbs6lhfrc.fsf@nestle.ai.mit.edu> For a really good laugh follow these links to discover the ramifications of continuous global study of primes http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0387970371 http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=4-0387970371-3