Comics about mathematics, science, and the student life.

Research Bubble

Five research papers reference each other, with no one actually doing any work. Researcher: "Did anyone actually take the time to look outside of these five papers?!"

In mathematics, this is known as “proof by circularity”, and is partly where I got the idea for this comic (from someone else).

However, my real motivation came from the fact that I was looking at the literature for a specific topic, and I kept on seeing the same few papers being referenced. I was hoping to find something new, but I couldn’t seem to break this “bubble” of citations.