grinch
Explanation
This comic reimagines the story of the Grinch through the lens of social science methodology.
The opening panel references the Whos in Whoville singing together despite having their presents stolen, and someone comments that "perhaps Christmas means more than..." But a character interrupts: "Hold up. Christmas means more? More than what? You need a control group here."
The comic then critiques the Grinch's experimental design. The issue isn't whether the Whos still celebrate -- it's the methodology. If you wanted to actually test whether material goods affect Christmas spirit, you'd need proper controls: separating internal disgust from external conditions, taking measurements over time, having a sample larger than one town, and getting specific preference data.
The final panels show a character declaring that "ancient people would have once marveled at the fact that we have such powerful science" -- only for another character to respond: "Oh, you social scientists crack me up. Do you want to be optimized?"
The humor operates on multiple levels: it mocks the tendency of social scientists to critique the methodology of everything (even children's stories), while also landing a jab at the social sciences themselves from the perspective of harder sciences. The Grinch story is treated as a badly designed experiment, which is both pedantic and genuinely funny because the methodological criticisms are actually valid.