Here’s a pretty lame [XKCD] cartoon:

I wish the writer who draws these would just stick to math. Ridiculing something one doesn’t know much about doesn’t result in humour, let alone satire. Good satire comes from understanding, and while there is always a risk of it only getting through fully to people interested in the matter (as do most mathemathics- or engineering- themed XKCD strips, curiously enough), vastness of reception says little of the quality of a work. I don’t always get those, but friends in the hard sciences can explain their accuracy and appeal. This comic on the other hand only displays ignorance, and is in that rendered pathetic compared to the series’ standard.

Yes, theory and criticism in the humanities sound easy to bluff, but it can only deceive people who have no grasp on either. (This could be a joke on the easily misled grad students, I understand, but I doubt the ones in the sciences are that much better in their respective fields.) I also understand that to a scientist something that cannot be ascertained through experiments and repetition sounds like a situation in which anything can pass for true or scholarly, but honestly, the people in the humanities are aware of the pitfalls of their disciplines and there are standards that keep things in check. Ignorance thereof is no proof of their absence.

Another failure of the comic lies in the confusion of willingness to listen with acceptance. Precisely because theories in the humanities cannot be ascertained through numbers or lab work, one needs to spend more time with them, analyse them with greater care, return to them, make certain that they are understood correctly before they can be commented upon. Of course, in real life the conversation would hardly have lasted through even a conception of a paper, let alone eight of them, but that it would take more than 48 seconds only means that they’re listening. I’m really not convinced that this is something to laugh at.

Yes, sour humanities student is sour.