Chemists' last words series 1.

This time again I use old jokes for the blog. I have not too much inspiration in general for the cartoons at the moment, and especially in my original direction. That is, I do not want to push the blog too much in the anti-sexist direction at the moment. And as I have tons of things to do at work, I also have less time to think about new sophisticated cartoons. But I hope I'll be soon back with more original ideas.

Light bulb series 2. - evolutionists

I am a little bit burnt out at the moment, plus I have other creative projects going on, so I am a little bit minimalist this time, I just continue with illustrations of well-known scientific jokes. Hope to be back later with more creativity.

Evolution of the scientist (more exactly of the scientific boss)

I do not want to comment too much... but still... I think we all have seen at least some stages of such scientific carreer evolution. It starts with an enthusiastic young scientist working hard in the lab for 10-15 years (minimum 10 hours per day). Then this species evolves to someone who wins his own grants and spends most time with administration and maybe manuscript preparation, so he goes ahead step by step towards professorship (in some countries via the habilitation procedure as well) by progressively leaving the lab forever in the next 5-15 years. But of course for all this you need to be quite dexterous and lucky. And then, the final stage of evolution is that of the professorship (not obligatorily, and it happens in general within 1-10 years after the Homo habilis habilitatis stage). I am not at all sure that this automatically leads to wisdom ('sapientia')... It leads to a huge ego in general, to administration and further, complete alienation from the lab and the raw data and the results and this way from reality... As you can see, there is not too much space for kids and time spent at home during this carreer evolution. This is why you can see so few female professors in experimental science.

Scientific Mother's Day - episode 2...

This cartoon is for a friend working in protein analysis and of course western blotting of photosynthetic proteins... I was just inspired by Baby Boo’s napkin after a meal with spinach while reading her latest paper on the topic. Happy Mother’s Day for all mother scientists... May you find science in your everyday life at home with your kid, just like I did :-).

Baby names for statisticians

In my opinion most scientists, or - at least - probably most women scientists do not really like statistics. Or maybe, without generalization I can say that probably 85% of scientists use statistics (and think it is useful) but hate to do it. Or am I the only one who is often in trouble with statistical data treatment? Whenever it comes to statistics I have my own joke about it (and about its usefulness) as follows.
- How probable is it that I am Napoleon?
- ???
- 50 %.
- ??? (She must have gone mad.)
- No, it is 50 %, because either I am Napoleon or I am not.
Such problems with statistics are for instance well known for all pregnant women who make some genetic tests that provide some probability data... What is the significance/usefulness of a statistical test/method that is only 87% correct, that gives you 2-3% false positive results, and gives you a final estimation saying that your baby has some health or developmental problems with 1:23 probability. Science helped you a lot again...