the-bones-speak
Explanation
The Joke
A person asks a fortune teller (wearing a stereotypical mystic outfit with a tall hat) what the "mystic bones" said. The fortune teller replies with terrible news: the bones said the person would get a good diagnosis from the doctor. The person is confused, pointing out that a good diagnosis is not terrible news.
The fortune teller then explains that they went to write the prediction down, but realized they only had a sample size of one, it was not double-blind, and the test was not rigorous. So they rolled bones for 99 other people and discovered that, over a larger sample, their predictions were no better than random guesses. The fortune teller is now conducting clinical trials to see if looking at pig entrails or monitoring a poisoned chicken's movements yields better results, but is "not super hopeful." The person feels "adrift," and the fortune teller responds: "Isn't it amazing nobody else has noticed this?"
The Humor
The joke is the absurdity of a fortune teller applying rigorous scientific methodology to their mystical practice -- and arriving at the obvious conclusion that bone-throwing does not actually predict the future. The humor comes from the collision of two completely incompatible worldviews: the fortune teller takes their craft seriously enough to subject it to sample sizes, double-blind protocols, and clinical trials, yet seems genuinely surprised and disappointed that divination does not hold up to scrutiny.
The final line -- "Isn't it amazing nobody else has noticed this?" -- is the punchline, satirizing the fact that practitioners of pseudoscience rarely bother to test whether their methods actually work. The fortune teller is presented as uniquely honest for doing so, while simultaneously highlighting how obvious the conclusion should be.
References
The comic references key concepts from the scientific method and clinical research: sample size, double-blind studies, and clinical trials. These are the standard tools used to evaluate whether a treatment or prediction method actually works. The comic also references several ancient divination practices, including osteomancy (reading bones), haruspicy (reading animal entrails), and alectryomancy (divination by observing a chicken's behavior).