2010-01-07
Explanation
This comic is titled "You Don'''t Want Scientific Parents!" and presents three panels showing different types of scientist parents interacting with their children in ways that are hurtful because of their professional perspectives. The first panel, labeled "Astronomer," shows a bespectacled father gleefully telling his child "You'''re a cosmic speck!" -- which is scientifically accurate (humans are insignificant relative to the scale of the universe) but emotionally devastating when said by a parent to a child. The second panel, labeled "Neurologist," shows a mother telling her child "You'''re so predictable" -- referencing how neuroscience studies deterministic patterns in brain behavior, but coming across as a dismissive insult. The third panel, labeled "Engineer," shows a father handing his child a metal rod and saying "Hold this metal rod. I want to try something" -- implying he is about to use his child as a test subject for some potentially dangerous experiment.
The humor comes from the clash between scientific objectivity and the emotional needs of a parent-child relationship. Each scientist parent is technically correct from their professional standpoint but is completely failing at being a supportive, nurturing parent. The astronomer reduces his child to existential insignificance, the neurologist strips away any sense of free will or individuality, and the engineer treats the child as an expendable test subject. It satirizes the stereotype of scientists being so consumed by their field that they cannot turn off their analytical thinking even in personal relationships.
The votey panel shows the child looking at what appears to be the engineer parent on a hill in the distance, possibly having launched or catapulted them as the result of the "experiment" with the metal rod. This confirms that the engineer parent'''s request was indeed the setup for something dangerous and irresponsible, completing the joke about scientists being terrible parents when they apply their professional instincts to child-rearing.