flood-5
Explanation
This comic riffs on the question "Why do so many cultures from around the world have flood myths?"
A man asks God this question. God, looking sheepish, replies "Oh, uh, well..." and the comic flashes back to "Before the Deluge," where God announces to an angel "I'm gonna do an experiment on life forms in a sealed container." The angel asks "Uh... with an N of one?" -- referring to the sample size.
The joke is a science humor take on the Biblical flood narrative. God's flood wasn't divine punishment for sin -- it was a badly designed scientific experiment with a sample size of one (N=1), which is the most basic statistical error you can make. The angel's skepticism mirrors that of a peer reviewer questioning the methodology. The reason every culture has a flood myth is simply that God only ran the experiment once (on one container/world), making the results statistically meaningless. The comic pokes fun at both the flood myth and at poor experimental design in science.