“If it’s not fun, it’s not epidemiology!”

One of our favorite slogans attributed to Darwin Labarthe in the Mentorship Guide of the American Heart Association

The discovery of the humorous slogans being used by a University of North Florida Assistant Professor Tammie Johnson and her launch of a new online T-shirt company (see article this issue) reminded us of “On The Light Side”, a regular column in The Epidemiology Monitor several years ago. Also in connection with that column, the Monitor ran several humor contests which were much enjoyed by our readers. We have decided to launch a new contest inspired by a double entendre marriage vow (see related article in this issue).

Among the earlier contests were the following:

1. A Double Entendre Slogan Contest

The winning slogan was:

Epidemiologists prefer close associations

Submitted by Andy Penziner

The first runner up slogan was:

Excite an epidemiologist—cause an effect

Submitted by Ginger Stefanchik

The second runner up was:

If you’ve got the time and the place,

I’m the person

Submitted by Barbara McArthur

2. A Collective Term Contest

We initiated the contest by saying—Since birds come in flocks and fish in schools, what collective term best describes epidemiologists?

Some of the most promising suggestions were:

An outbreak of epidemiologists

A case of epidemiologists

A cluster of epidemiologists

A doll of epidemiologists

There were several others.

An interesting note we received at the time from Donald Peterson read as follows:

“Collective nouns have been favorites of mine for some time. I’ve enjoyed streams of urologists, rashes of dermatologists, pots of pediatricians, etc. If epidemiology is what epidemiologists do, then it follows that a ‘do’ of epidemiologists might be an appropriate collective noun. This has an active, positive, and constructive connotation…Besides ‘do’ is shorter than ‘doll’ “

3. A Complete The Sentence Contest

Old epidemiologists never die…

A biostatistician Carleen Thompson won this contest with her slogan:

Old epidemiologists Never Die…

They just don’t count any more.

We received more than 200 sentence completions from 50 of our readers.
 

4. The Tip of the Iceberg Metaphor Contest

Michel Thuriaux working in Papua New Guinea wrote to say that the “tip of the iceberg” metaphor did not fit well with his work in the tropics. He asked if we could ask our readers to suggest an equivalent metaphor for “iceberg” less obviously limited to polar or subpolar climes.

We received many inventive metaphor suggestions. The winner was Daniel Fife for his entry—Front of the parade.

Other clever suggestions—

The fin of the shark,

The ears of the hippopotamus,

Tail of the elephant,

Hump of the camel,

First raindrops of the rainstorm, and many others.

5. A Health Care Reform Slogan Contest

Coming at the time of the Clinton efforts to reform health care and with everyone lobbying for their favorite provisions, we asked readers to devise a catchy slogan that could compete with the Harry and Louise commercial by capturing the role of epidemiology and its importance in health care reform. We received more than 125 slogans.
 

The winning slogan was Epidemiology in Health Care Reforn—A Low Risk Investment

The winner was Del Aguila.

6. A Bogus Headlines Contest

For this contest, we invited readers to invent headlines with double entendres involving epidemiology and health. To get the creative juices flowing, we primed the pump with the following bogus headline:

New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group

The winning headline in our contest submitted by Ken Satin was:

Electric Field Study Results Shocking with a  subheadline reading Experts Methodology Not Well Grounded

7. The Best Epidemiology “To Do” List

We kickstarted this contest with a sample to do list for a race car driver. It went like this:

1. Go fast.

2. Turn left.

We wondered what a succinct to do list for an epidemiologist would be.

The winning entry came from Carol McPherson.

Her list was equally elegant and apropos

1. Follow people around until they die.

2. Count them.

A close runner up was submitted by R. DiGiacomo.

1. Find cause.

2. Make change.
■

Reader Comments:
Have a thought or comment on this story ?  Fill out the information below and we'll post it on this page once it's been reviewed by our editors.