The TWiV bump, according to Christopher Sullivan at the University of Texas Austin:
…in regards to how your show helps scientists, I must mention the “TWiV bump”. I believe that at least Alan is a Colbert Report fan based on his reference to “truthiness” on TWiV. As you may know, Stephen Colbert claims that artists who have their work mentioned on his show benefit in terms of recognition, sales, prestige, etc.– he refers to this as the “Colbert Bump”. I think it is obvious that this is also true for scientists whose work is mentioned on TWiV. In TWiV 174 you profiled a paper from my lab. Mere hours after that episode was released I was contacted by two different colleagues offering me their congratulations (and envy). You should know that it is a career goal of many of us younger virologists to get the “TWiV Bump”!
Some other examples of the TWiV bump:
Oren Kobilier writes:
Well, I probably got the Twiv bump (Twiv 115 – Color me infected) as now I am starting my own lab in the medical school at Tel Aviv University.
Tyler Sharp (TWiV 178)writes:
I wanted to let you know that I will be staying at the Dengue Branch in a permanent position once EIS is over in June. One factor that motivated my bosses to find the money to keep me here was my TWiV interview, which garnered a lot of attention for the Branch in a variety of capacities.
Kathy Spindler’s PhD student Tien-Huei Hsu will be doing a postdoc with Matt Evans, after she heard about the opportunity on TWiV.
