Comments on: If Doc Brown Were a REAL Scientist

By: Matthew Wrather

Matthew Wrather — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:22:03 +0000

@Jim

That is really a brilliant observation. Let me add to it that Doc himself mentions to Marty that his family name was “Von Braun” before it was Anglicized.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:45:03 +0000

Here’s a last scrap to throw on the BTTF overthink pile.

End of BTTF3. Doc and Clara show up in the time-traveling locomotive and introduce their sons… Jules and Verne. Aww, touching. A tribute to Doc’s favorite author, Jules Verne, who inspired the whole time-hoppin’ mess we just watched.

Wait a minute. Vern?

Vern Brown?

Who, thanks to the demonstrated capabilities of Doc’s technology, could have “been born” anytime, anywhere, from the POV of people around him? Like, say, in Germany in 1912?

I wonder if growing up with a scientist dad gave VERN BROWN an interest in, I dunno, rocketry.

I’m just sayin’.

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:08:39 +0000

Unfortunately, a competitor read Doc Brown’s landmark paper and built his own time machine, then collected similar data and submitted to the same journal five years prior.
The upshot is that Doc Brown was scooped and lost his funding, thereby preventing him from performing the experiments in his landmark paper and preventing his competitor from getting the ideas to scoop him; and the whole universe disappeared in a cataclysm of causality.

By: ekey

ekey — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:06:31 +0000

Wow! I am not a scientist… I am not even in the scientist industry… er, yeah. But I know what byline order means when it comes to journalists in a newsroom — I have seen grown men get into fist fights over whose name should come first on a story. I can only imagine what that means in the scientist world. I wanna hear it! Hypothesis: Flaming poo bags at the front door of Dr. Biologist.

By: lee

lee — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:20:03 +0000

Was the use of a Watchmen-esque font for “Overthinking It Proudly Presents” intentional?

By: Johann

Johann — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:29:46 +0000

Wow, being a “professional scientist” myself, I laughed out loud and salute your humor!
Also, I am going to use my school’s resources and print this comic out on the color printer and hang it on my office door. ‘Cause that’s just what us scientists do.

By: Gab

Gab — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:48:58 +0000

I myself am not a scientist, but I assisted in a psychology research study that is going to be published, and oh my GOD the drama about the order of the names was rigoddamndiculous. Threats of lawyers and such. What is the most common way for biologists to settle it? Rock-paper-scissors, right? Or do you flip a coin?