a News and Views article entitled “Influenza A viruses: shaking out our shibboleths”. I clearly remember Peter Palese asking me if I knew what a shibboleth was. I thought it was one of H.P. Lovecraft’s fictitious creatures. Katsuhisa Nakajima, Ulrich Desselberger, Peter Palese (1978). Recent human influenza A (H1N1) viruses are