From Personal Ads to Cloning Labs: More Science Cartoons

'Science' magazine is one of the world's two premier outlets for the best in refereed general science reports, along with 'Nature.' It's also one of the places where Harris has published his brilliant cartoons. The cover hooked me, but the first cartoon had me roaring out loud - a wry expression of the improbability (and wonder) of life on earth, and a clear but counterintuitive statement about chemical equilibrium in solutions with concentrations too low for statistical mechanics. Then a while later, a researcher emerges from a lab with a chimp, saying "It's just not working. HE's teaching ME primate speech" - the researcher herself being a primate, of course. Then the "String Theory Quartet." Then the Museum Dilemma: X-rays reveal a Leonardo under a Rembrandt. And so on. Science is far too important a matter to be taken seriously. Face it, we're an irrational and emotional species, playing (often convincingly) at rationality. Harris does a wonderful service for humankind: he makes all that hard stuff as accessible and visceral as a belly laugh. Harris is the only cartoonist I know of who correctly translates the subtleties of science into the silliness of the human condition. This doesn't ridicule or trivialize the science. Quite the opposite, Harris makes it real. If Harris didn't exist, we would have had to invent him. But damm, I wouldn't have been smart enough to think him up. I'm just glad he was there to do it himself. //wiredweird

Sidney Harris is without question the best cartoonist with a scientific bent; his cartoons lampoon science and the people who practice it. He also throws an occasional barb at the people who follow pseudoscience as well. No area of science is beyond his reach, everything from the environment to nuclear physics appears in his cartoons. I reread this book every five years or so and smile every time I see the cartoons again. I also place copies of some of his cartoons in my office. My students enjoy them and they are a recurrent reminder not to take myself too seriously.