p-3
Original: p-3 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (wide top panel): A flying saucer hovers over a dark hillside at night, a beam of light shining down. The alien speaks.
Alien (from the saucer): EARTH SCIENTISTS! WE WISH TO SHARE OUR WISDOM WITH YOU! DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY?
Panel 2: A green hillside; a small group of tiny human figures stands at the bottom.
Human (off-panel, in speech bubble): HOW DO YOU DETERMINE TRUTH?
Panel 3: The saucer hovers in the sky, seen over the back of a woman's head.
Alien: P MUST BE LESS THAN .03.
Panel 4: Close on a woman with dark hair in a pink/red shirt, looking skeptical.
Woman: YOU MEAN .05.
Panel 5: The alien (a gray alien) replies.
Alien: .03
Panel 6: The woman raises her hands, conceding.
Woman: WELL SHIT.
Final panel (newspaper headline): A newspaper held up reads:
BILLIONS OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS RETRACTED
Sub-headline: Scientists now live in fear of single-fingered alien race
Caption (below the comic): THIS IS A BONUS COMIC BROUGHT TO YOU BY EARLY BUYERS OF MY NEW BOOK, A CITY ON MARS, WHICH YOU SHOULD BUY BECAUSE MARY ROACH SAID IT WAS GOOD. CLICK THE COMIC FOR MORE INFO.
Votey:
The gray alien turns and speaks, smug.
Alien: SEE, THIS IS WHY DOLPHINS NEVER DEVELOPED SCIENCE.
Alien (from the saucer): EARTH SCIENTISTS! WE WISH TO SHARE OUR WISDOM WITH YOU! DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY?
Panel 2: A green hillside; a small group of tiny human figures stands at the bottom.
Human (off-panel, in speech bubble): HOW DO YOU DETERMINE TRUTH?
Panel 3: The saucer hovers in the sky, seen over the back of a woman's head.
Alien: P MUST BE LESS THAN .03.
Panel 4: Close on a woman with dark hair in a pink/red shirt, looking skeptical.
Woman: YOU MEAN .05.
Panel 5: The alien (a gray alien) replies.
Alien: .03
Panel 6: The woman raises her hands, conceding.
Woman: WELL SHIT.
Final panel (newspaper headline): A newspaper held up reads:
BILLIONS OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS RETRACTED
Sub-headline: Scientists now live in fear of single-fingered alien race
Caption (below the comic): THIS IS A BONUS COMIC BROUGHT TO YOU BY EARLY BUYERS OF MY NEW BOOK, A CITY ON MARS, WHICH YOU SHOULD BUY BECAUSE MARY ROACH SAID IT WAS GOOD. CLICK THE COMIC FOR MORE INFO.
Votey:
The gray alien turns and speaks, smug.
Alien: SEE, THIS IS WHY DOLPHINS NEVER DEVELOPED SCIENCE.
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. A flying saucer hovers over a dark hillside at night and an alien announces it wishes to share its wisdom and asks if Earth scientists have questions about the nature of reality. A tiny group of humans on a green hill asks, 'How do you determine truth?' The alien answers, 'P must be less than .03.' A dark-haired woman in a pink shirt corrects, 'You mean .05.' The alien flatly repeats, '.03.' The woman raises her hands in defeat and says, 'Well shit.' A final panel shows a held-up newspaper with the headline 'BILLIONS OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS RETRACTED' and a sub-headline that scientists now live in fear of a single-fingered alien race. A caption notes this is a bonus comic for early buyers of the book 'A City on Mars.' In the votey aftercomic, a close-up of the gray alien turning its head, saying smugly, 'See, this is why dolphins never developed science.' The joke: aliens enforce a stricter statistical significance threshold (p < .03 instead of the human standard of .05), instantly invalidating most published science.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.