Lesion
Explanation
This is a single-panel comic showing an alien flying saucer firing a destructive beam at the Earth. The alien narrates: "Nobody knows what internal mechanism produces airplanes, but if we lesion this region that contains hydrocarbons, it causes airplanes to stop. Therefore that area is called the 'airplane modulation structure.'"
The joke is a pointed analogy to how neuroscience sometimes works. In brain research, scientists often identify the function of brain regions by observing what happens when those regions are damaged (lesioned). If damaging area X causes behavior Y to stop, researchers may label area X as the center or modulator for behavior Y. However, this reasoning can be flawed -- correlation between damage and loss of function does not necessarily mean that region is where the function "lives." The region might just be a necessary link in a chain, a fuel supply, or an enabling condition rather than the true source.
The comic illustrates this by analogy: destroying Earth's oil-producing regions would indeed cause airplanes to stop flying, but it would be absurd to conclude that those regions are the "airplane modulation structure." Oil fields enable flight but do not produce or control airplanes in any meaningful sense. This is a critique of the localization fallacy in neuroscience -- the tendency to over-attribute complex behaviors to specific brain regions based solely on lesion studies.