The Facebook group in question is called Science diagrams that look like s**tposts and is dedicated to sharing proper science illustrations, figures, and graphs from textbooks and other publications whose editors obviously never bothered to check the end product before printing, thus ending in results that are reminiscent of s**tposting—internet slang for creating content of no value.
The group was created by an internaut named Luke who found these diagrams really funny, while admitting he has no idea why—it just was, and we all understand it, though can’t entirely explain it.
It has over 448,000 members as of this article and even has its own Twitter account with over 500,000 followers. There’s an influx of hundreds of posts each month with members constantly sharing some of the most ridiculous, yet accurate, depictions of all things science.
Shared imagery often involves animals and the natural world, but it’s not just how they depict it, but also what they write. Besides disfigured animals and humans, illustrations that raise more questions than they actually answer, and crappy design in general, there’s also the occasional mislabeling (whether deliberate or not, nobody is truly sure) of illustrations that raise eyebrows at the very least.
More often than not, these diagrams are taken out of their academic and scientific contexts, making it raise even more eyebrows, though others, even within context, would still look odd making people think how is this scientific because of how they are visually depicted.
It is interesting to think that s**tposting is, in some shape or form, present in the actual scientific community, especially in physics. There is this metaphor of the spherical cow which is a highly simplified model of a complex real-life phenomenon where a problem is reduced to its simplest form so that brainy people could make the calculations more feasible, despite it being no longer applicable in reality. So, some scientists are used to this.
For more hilarious scientific oddities presented in image form on the internet, you can check out the Facebook group or follow their Twitter. Or just keep scrolling! But before you go, let us know what you thought of this. Do you have any stories to share about your textbooks? Leave us a comment below!
