Funnily Serious: Using Comedy to Communicate Science

Abstract

The public perception of science and its practitioners is one of stoic seriousness or of laughable arcana. But science and humour have had a long (if marginalised) history together, from in-jokes and jocular critiques inside the scientific community, formal education and through to public communication of science in the media. The growth of the use of comedy in a scientific context is such that now scientific topics are often included in the repertoire of mainstream comedians.

The various uses of humour to communicate scientific ideas is examined, why it is employed, and its effectiveness assessed. The trends in the use of scientific humour are charted in academic papers, popular science writing, film and television documentaries and stand-up comedy. A categorisation of comedic approaches is made based upon the relative “dilutions” of science and comedy, and the merits and drawbacks of each approach to communication are compared and discussed. It is also argued that the recently growing presence of scientific topics in mainstream comedy may be an indicator of the public understanding of the topics in question.

This thesis shows how humour can have a successfully “humanising” effect upon science education, both formal and casual, in a wide variety of media. It argues for the effectiveness of a comedic approach to science in order to reach wider audiences. Finally, the use of comedy to communicate scientific concepts is examined in the creative component of the thesis, the documentary film Tangled Waters.