麻豆传媒

SCIENTISTS are often derided for having a poor sense of humour. In our , we hit back with evidence of the 鈥渇un鈥� side of science: an extract from the memoirs of physicist Edward da Costa Andrade. He recounted the top-class banter that ensued when a colleague ordered hare soup in Andrade鈥檚 college refectory and the dish arrived with a beetle in it. 鈥淲aiter, waiter,鈥� he called, 鈥淚 ordered beetle soup and there鈥檚 a hair in it!鈥� A fellow diner took him at his word and advised him to 鈥渂ring it up before the next refectory committee鈥�, provoking the inevitable quip. Laugh? It鈥檚 not reported if they did.

Our wordplay was no less hypodermic-sharp a full 30 years later, when in our we reported a spat between the news agency Reuters and the New England Journal of Medicine. Then, as now, that journal allowed journalists to see its papers before publication, on the understanding that the hacks didn鈥檛 let the cat out of the bag early and scoop its big stories. A paper revealing that a daily aspirin substantially reduced the frequency of heart attacks in men was too tempting for Reuters, though, and the agency broke the journal鈥檚 embargo. Mutual recrimination and retaliation ensued, inspiring our cartoonist David Austin to draw the cartoon revived above.

By 2007, our Feedback column had been up and running for a number of years and our quotient of humour 鈥� or attempts at it 鈥� had risen correspondingly. In our 10 March issue, Feedback was picking on product claims, a popular target. Apparently Seabrooke Potato Crisps was proud that its snack had been 鈥渃ooked in sunflower oil for over 25 years鈥�. Was the same oil used throughout, we wondered.

We鈥檒l let you be the judge of whether scientific humour has improved over the five decades since Edward Andrade told his amusing anecdote.