He adds, “I truly have no idea what this is getting at without Google.”
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I’m pretty sure there was a fairly major discovery (penicillin?) that came about because someone forgot to clean a petri dish. So this fellow, instead of following up on what’s growing in the dish, nopes out.
Madmup’s got it. The title, “Not Alexander Fleming”, is the key- he did indeed discover penicillin. But pictures draw the eye away from even large words.
But he’s off-panel when he says “Gross”. That implies he’s looking at something other than the petri dishes.
Or he’s avoiding it all together and leaving the mess for the lab assistant to clean up.
I agree with Walt. Fleming investigated his petri dishes. This guy, who is notably not Fleming, does not. A similar cartoon might show not-Ben Franklin refusing to fly a kite in the rain, or not-Jane Goodall choosing to stay in a hotel and take safari tours.
Not excessively funny but not inscrutable.
The humour is in the irony. Many useful discoveries have resulted from experimenters paying attention to anomalous results. IIRC, Teflon and Post-it notes (trademarks acknowledged) are examples. This guy will never be as famous as Fleming (whom I did not have to Google – yet another trademark).
I guess it just depends on whether “Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when he left some petri dishes near a window and some mold blew in and he realized that the bacteria weren’t growing around where the mold was, and decided that the mold was more interesting than the bacteria, and thereby invented antibiotics which is one of the three biggest advances in medicine in the 19th through 21st centuries. (The other two are antiseptic technique and anesthesia)” is the sort of thing that you just know and have since you were a kid at a basic enough level that you don’t remember learning it.
And no idea why that is in that category for me.
I had a similar info background on that. Except I also credited him with being the founding host for Jeopardy. What a multi-faceted guy!
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka! ‘ but ‘That’s funny…’ –Isaac Asimov
From an apple falling from a tree to noise in an antenna, this is undeniably true.
Mitch4 (8): There’s an Art to that.
I read it as the guy is grossed out by anything you might find in a petri dish. Not much of a scientist, right?
I’m not fond of mold either….
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny …”
Again, though, if he’s calling the petri dishes “gross”, why separate subject and object so far visually?
@Powers Perfect CIDU for you. It is a standard thing to have the out-loud announcement about the emotional decision after the inner contemplation. Note that he was thinking about it first; then he SPOKE loudly, his feeling about the situation.
Maybe you’ve done this thing I do; I walk around room, thinking of how to do something about an uncomfortable situation, and all of a sudden, I shoutout some emotional declaration, with no intention of doing so, and hoping the neighbors didn’t hear it.
Asimov wrote so much stuff, it would be pretty difficult to search it all for one phrase.
I love John’s comics but I didn’t understand this one until someone explained it in the comments.
I would say that as long as it’s been digitized, searching all of Asimov’s writing is trivial. The only thing that would fall outside that corpus would be personal communications, ie letters and post cards, of which I understand he was prodigious and fastidious (responding to almost everyone who wrote). But if he said it on a post card to one solitary fan, would it really count? (Yes, technically, but an audience of one can hardly be disseminated…)
What I’m thinking might be hard to capture would be TV appearances and keynote addresses, which apparently he enjoyed giving. I could see him having said the quote in some TV panel, which, if there is a transcript surviving, is probably not easy to come by nor collate with Asimov. I wonder if anyone is into archiving and has a sense of how close to truth I am: could be all transcripts were digitized long ago, and most programs had transcripts, and it’s trivial to collate them with the people who were speaking; or it could be that this is one of those great missing sources of information that we thought would be around forever, but didn’t even last the generation…
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’m pretty sure there was a fairly major discovery (penicillin?) that came about because someone forgot to clean a petri dish. So this fellow, instead of following up on what’s growing in the dish, nopes out.
Madmup’s got it. The title, “Not Alexander Fleming”, is the key- he did indeed discover penicillin. But pictures draw the eye away from even large words.
But he’s off-panel when he says “Gross”. That implies he’s looking at something other than the petri dishes.
Or he’s avoiding it all together and leaving the mess for the lab assistant to clean up.
And here’s a link to an article about penicillin-
https://www.empr.com/home/news/drug-news/one-of-biggest-discoveries-in-medicine-started-with-a-dirty-dish/#:~:text=The%20biologist%20Sir%20Alexander%20Fleming,had%20been%20fastidious%20with%20cleaning.
I agree with Walt. Fleming investigated his petri dishes. This guy, who is notably not Fleming, does not. A similar cartoon might show not-Ben Franklin refusing to fly a kite in the rain, or not-Jane Goodall choosing to stay in a hotel and take safari tours.
Not excessively funny but not inscrutable.
The humour is in the irony. Many useful discoveries have resulted from experimenters paying attention to anomalous results. IIRC, Teflon and Post-it notes (trademarks acknowledged) are examples. This guy will never be as famous as Fleming (whom I did not have to Google – yet another trademark).
I guess it just depends on whether “Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when he left some petri dishes near a window and some mold blew in and he realized that the bacteria weren’t growing around where the mold was, and decided that the mold was more interesting than the bacteria, and thereby invented antibiotics which is one of the three biggest advances in medicine in the 19th through 21st centuries. (The other two are antiseptic technique and anesthesia)” is the sort of thing that you just know and have since you were a kid at a basic enough level that you don’t remember learning it.
And no idea why that is in that category for me.
I had a similar info background on that. Except I also credited him with being the founding host for Jeopardy. What a multi-faceted guy!
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka! ‘ but ‘That’s funny…’ –Isaac Asimov
From an apple falling from a tree to noise in an antenna, this is undeniably true.
Mitch4 (8): There’s an Art to that.
I read it as the guy is grossed out by anything you might find in a petri dish. Not much of a scientist, right?
I’m not fond of mold either….
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny …”
Isaac Asimov (attrib)
Although, probably not. Quote Investigator article.
Again, though, if he’s calling the petri dishes “gross”, why separate subject and object so far visually?
@Powers Perfect CIDU for you. It is a standard thing to have the out-loud announcement about the emotional decision after the inner contemplation. Note that he was thinking about it first; then he SPOKE loudly, his feeling about the situation.
Maybe you’ve done this thing I do; I walk around room, thinking of how to do something about an uncomfortable situation, and all of a sudden, I shoutout some emotional declaration, with no intention of doing so, and hoping the neighbors didn’t hear it.
Asimov wrote so much stuff, it would be pretty difficult to search it all for one phrase.
I love John’s comics but I didn’t understand this one until someone explained it in the comments.
I would say that as long as it’s been digitized, searching all of Asimov’s writing is trivial. The only thing that would fall outside that corpus would be personal communications, ie letters and post cards, of which I understand he was prodigious and fastidious (responding to almost everyone who wrote). But if he said it on a post card to one solitary fan, would it really count? (Yes, technically, but an audience of one can hardly be disseminated…)
What I’m thinking might be hard to capture would be TV appearances and keynote addresses, which apparently he enjoyed giving. I could see him having said the quote in some TV panel, which, if there is a transcript surviving, is probably not easy to come by nor collate with Asimov. I wonder if anyone is into archiving and has a sense of how close to truth I am: could be all transcripts were digitized long ago, and most programs had transcripts, and it’s trivial to collate them with the people who were speaking; or it could be that this is one of those great missing sources of information that we thought would be around forever, but didn’t even last the generation…