A Response to the Statement: ‘Mad Scientists are Just Mad Engineers’.

 (originally published 24th of July, 2017)

    There’s a comic strip which has been doing the rounds of the internets for quite some time now. It looks like this:

(Original by Sanjay Kulkarni from his 'Cowbirds in Love' comic)

    I've been wanting to dispute this one for some time.

    This is the sort of thing that people tend to pull out and go "A-HA!" and think it's a really clever observation without really examining its veracity. Kinda ironic given the subject matter, really. However, the problem with this picture is that it's out of context. We have a mad 'engineer' next to their Death Ray cannon, but how did the Death Ray Cannon get there? Death Rays don’t, as a rule, tend to just appear out of nothing. And what sort of Death Ray is it? What are its operating principles? How does it work? And how did it come to be? To find the answer to these questions we have to go back...                Our 'engineer' began his career working as a mad intern when, while performing his day-to-day mad tasks, he encountered an odd phenomenon. Certain frequencies of hitherto unknown radiation caused catastrophic results in laboratory animals.     "Hrm," thinks he, cackling gently to himself, "This bears further examination."     In the years to come, he conducts a series of experiments, modulating the frequencies, using different targets and carefully examining the results. He has setbacks of course, such as when his abduction of homeless human test subjects in Mexico City is discovered by masked wrestlers El Atomico and La Jaguar Negra, resulting in the loss of many of his notes, several prototypes and a small number of half-human, half-animal henchmen in a cataclysmic laboratory explosion that he could not possibly have survived.     And of course, he has breakthroughs, such as when he discovers that certain forms of crystalline-structured matter can focus and amplify the radiation, leading to the daring theft of the famous Star of Zanzibar Diamond from the Museum of Antwerp to serve as the perfect lens for what he has begun to call his 'Death Ray'.     For decades, he has tested and tested and tested again. Refining his process with different subjects, materials and frequencies until finally, he is ready to reveal his research to the world. And so, he begins to use his Death Ray to cut through bank vaults and hold the city to ransom by threatening to use it to trigger volcanic eruptions (the result of a collaboration with a mad geologist of his acquaintance). Because while pure mad science is dandy, mad science requires funding, and many grants are just not available to the average supervillain, so he or she is forced to acquire alternate revenue streams.     Then comes publishing, which again is problematic. Our mad scientist is forced to rely on communication with the mainstream media (usually through plucky investigative journalists), or by forcibly assuming control of the airwaves. Unfortunately, the media, being as it is, will inevitably misrepresent his academic articles as 'ransom notes', 'insane manifestos' or (oh insult of insults) 'the ravings of a madman'. But a genius' work is never done. 
    It is only after all of this - the careful research, the repetition, the analysis and countless setbacks - that we reach the point depicted in the initial cartoon. And after all this work, are we to just dismissed our scientist out of hand as a 'mad engineer'? For shame. Oh, and lest we forget the peer review process, this is a vital part of the mad scientists' itinerary (of Doom). Because inevitably, there will come a point where, even though his colleagues may have scorned his theories earlier, it comes time for him to "Show them. He'll Show Them ALL!!!" So yes, before you dismiss your next mad scientists (maybe it's his raving monologues, his unkempt cloud of dandelion-like hair, or the fact that he has a perspex dome covering his exposed, and eerily pulsing brain) consider all of the hard work that's got him to where he is now.

    Thenk yew.