SHAME!
Explanation
The Joke
A crowd chants "SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!" at an academic who "cited a claim from a paper that wasn't the original source of that claim." The caption below reads: "It was remarkably easy to correct the academic publishing incentive structure."
The Humor
The comic imagines a world where academic misconduct — specifically, citation errors — is punished with the same public shaming treatment as major social transgressions. In reality, academics frequently cite secondary sources rather than tracking down original papers, a practice that leads to citation chains where the original research gets buried and sometimes misrepresented. This is a well-known problem in academia, but it goes largely unpunished because the incentive structure rewards volume of publication over rigor of citation.
The humor comes from the absurd disproportionality: a mob wielding torches and chanting "SHAME!" over what most people would consider a minor scholarly oversight. But the caption delivers the real punchline — it turns out that this kind of extreme social pressure would actually be effective at fixing academic incentive problems. The implication is darkly funny: the reason academia hasn't fixed its systemic issues isn't that the problems are intractable, but that nobody has applied sufficient social pressure.
Broader Context
SMBC frequently satirizes academic culture, and Weinersmith (who collaborates regularly with academics and whose wife is a scientist) is well-positioned to lampoon the field's internal dysfunctions. Citation practices, publish-or-perish culture, and perverse incentive structures in research are recurring targets. The "SHAME!" chant may also reference the famous scene from Game of Thrones, adding a pop-culture layer to the academic satire.