Music holds an extraordinary power for learning and memory. A good earworm can stay with you for a lifetime. If you grew up in the US during 1970s or early 1980s, odds are that reading the phrases “conjunction junction” or “three is a magic number” will start songs playing in your head, complete with useful grammatical or numerical information. Schoolhouse Rock! taught a generation our times tables and our way around a sentence. The short video below takes a looks at Bob Dorough, the man behind those songs.

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion