When scientists step outside their safe laboratories, anything can happen. Of course, studying wild animals or digging out million-year-old fossils sounds exotic and exciting, but that’s only one side of the spectrum. The other side is sometimes gross and scary but mostly it’s hilarious. In 2015 scientists started sharing their most embarrassing #Fieldworkfails, and recently French illustrator Jim Jourdane has decided to compile the most memorable ones and turn them into amusing whimsical drawings.
From gluing yourself to a crocodile to walking in a thunderstorm with a 10 feet (3 metre) aerial, these moments show us that science is full of hilarious trainwrecks, too. Jourdane interviewed all scientists whose stories were included in his book to get a better understanding of their fieldwork and its details. «I talked to [them] I realized that there’s a lot of problems of communication with the general public about how they work, what they do,» he told Gizmodo. Thus, he tried to make his visual anecdotes available to everyone: «Eleven year old children, my grandmother, friends, scientists.»
