Onion Comments

Being a bit of a science geek, I ran a search for the word "evolution" in the Onion, and a few articles down I ran into "Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs." Visually the article establishes itself as any scientific article in an everyday newspaper might. A few pictures with taglines interrupt the text and that's about it. As far as content goes, however, I was extremely surpised at how well the article captures the nature of a science article in any popular medium. Subtle nuances make the article almost believable, if it weren't for the comedic quotes from fictional scientists. First, the article's overall tone is dead on with its serious counterpart. If you were to pick up a local newspaper anywhere and read a science article, it would refrain from being overly specific about the topic so that it doesn't go over the average reader's head. Such as an article about faster microchips wouldn't discuss in detail about the new design or different materials used, but would probably focus on how much faster it is than its predecessor and how much it will cost when it is put into use. This article gives you some simple statistics comparing dolphins and humans (such as brain size) and then comes to a conclusion for you, this particular one being dolphins will soon conquer the earth. The use of "experts" is another similarity between this article and an actual article. They present one or many experts in the field to give their opinions to build the article's own ethos(brownie points for class word).