Why "Lads"?

One of the science blogs I sometimes read is the Physics ArXiv blog (reviewing papers posted in the open access Physics ArXiv which is heavily used by the astronomy community). I like this blog as a way for me, at a low level, to keep up with major developments across physics, and to see what astronomy research catches the eye of a typical physicist.

I was interested to see today a nice review of one of the April Fools Day ArXiv papers about Galaxy Zoo discovering a new class of galaxy cluster. Check out the paper and don't miss the figures.

But why - why, did the author have to end the post reviewing this bit of scientific humour with:

"Keep up the good work lads."

Why?

The paper is "authored" by Marven Pedbost, Trillean Pomalgu and the Galaxy Zoo Team. Quite apart from the many (OK handful of) women on the Galaxy Zoo team itself, Trillian is quite clearly a woman's name.... Has "lads" morphed to be gender non-specific recently?

By the way I liked the Galaxy Zoo April Fools paper, but better still in my opinion was Time Variation of a Fundamental Dimensionless Constant. How come we never noticed that before! ;)



Now that's not so hard is it?