The public group currently has a little over 893,000 members. According to its About page, topics mainly revolve around “bad experiments, worse scientists, studies you wish to god you could unsee, and much, much, more.”
In addition to these photos and memes, the page also shares articles from IFLScience. This website delivers information in an entertaining yet educational way.
Since the group combines the concepts of science and humor, let’s get into what makes things funny, according to research.
University of Colorado professor Dr. Peter McGraw and his colleagues developed the benign violation theory. Simply put, it states that a comedic element exists in a tragic event only after a significant amount of time has passed.
Dr. McGraw and his team conducted an experiment where participants unanimously saw humor in getting hit by a car if it happened five years ago.
“There needs to be something wrong,” McGraw said in an interview with ZME Science. “That’s what’s sort of the counterintuitive part of humor. It’s generally this good, beneficial thing, but it has its roots in potentially negative experiences.”
Many people find a reason to laugh at supposedly inappropriate scenarios. According to Dr. McGraw, dark humor works because of psychological distance. He used the story about the Indonesian baby who smoked 40 cigarettes a day as an example.
“When I was first told about that, I laughed, because it seems unreal — what parent would let their kids smoke cigarettes?” McGraw said. “The fact that the situation seemed unbelievable made it benign. Then when I saw the video of this kid smoking, it was no longer possible to laugh about it.”
Humor has been deemed an effective method of delivering scientific information. A 2013 study featured a stand-up comedy project in Portugal that involved a group of scientists.
Researchers said tackling serious matters like climate change became easier because “laughter disarms people.”
The entertainment industry has also successfully blended science and humor through content dedicated to kids.
A research paper published by science education consultant Dr. Sai Pathmanathan mentioned popular cartoons like Spongebob SquarePants and Phineas and Ferb as examples of how they helped U.K. children learn general knowledge.
