This graphic uses humor to communicate a widely held public view of research; that the reality isn’t all it appears to be (a good illustration of Erving Goffman’s ‘front stage – back stage’ role performance). I chuckle along with everyone else; after all, I have been a researcher for over thirty years. Humor is instructive, however; there is usually a moral to the story. I realized early in my career that real people are injured when researchers do not scrupulously hold to objective, ethical procedures, because research informs policy. Keep the humor but fix the reason for it.
