Dangerous Fields
Dangerous Fields
[A line chart is shown going from left to right with two arrows on either side. On the line are ten dots spread out unevenly from close to each end. The first four dots are clustered together on the left side. Then follows 5 more dots unevenly spaced, all to the left of center. On the far right of the line, near the end, there is one dot. Beneath each dot, there goes a line down to a label written beneath each line. Above the chart, there is a big title and below that is an explanation. Below that again, there is a small arrow pointing to the right with a label above it.] Probability that you'll be killed by the thing you study By field
[Arrow pointing right, labeled:] More likely
[Labels for the ten dots from left to right:] Mathematics (0 pixels from first field, 0.00% of overall range of fields) Astronomy (9px, 1.35%) Economics (16px, 2.40%) Law (22px, 3.30%) Criminology (77px, 11.56%) Meteorology (96px, 14.41%) Chemistry (156px, 23.42%) Marine Biology (166px, 24.92%) Volcanology (206px, 30.93%) Gerontology (666px, 100.00%)

This is a graph of fields of study, ordered by how likely one is to die because of something that that field studies, with mathematics being the least dangerous and gerontology being the most. Gerontology, the scientific study of old age, is shown as much more dangerous than the other fields, so it is far on the right side of the graph. The joke is in the distinction between the danger of studying the thing, and the overall death rate from the thing.  Studying aging doesn't put you at much more risk of aging than the general population.  However, studying volcanoes is likely to put you in dangerous environments.
The title text is about Epidemiology , the study of health and disease conditions in populations. In the event of an epidemic, there is a strong chance that epidemiologists in the search for the cause, transmission, and treatment will be exposed and become victims of the disease in their own right. However, the title text refers more broadly to the role of epidemiology in maintaining detailed statistical records of diseases and other causes of death, such that eventually any epidemiologist (whatever the cause of death) will become one of their own statistics.
[A line chart is shown going from left to right with two arrows on either side. On the line are ten dots spread out unevenly from close to each end. The first four dots are clustered together on the left side. Then follows 5 more dots unevenly spaced, all to the left of center. On the far right of the line, near the end, there is one dot. Beneath each dot, there goes a line down to a label written beneath each line. Above the chart, there is a big title and below that is an explanation. Below that again, there is a small arrow pointing to the right with a label above it.] Probability that you'll be killed by the thing you study By field
[Arrow pointing right, labeled:] More likely
[Labels for the ten dots from left to right:] Mathematics (0 pixels from first field, 0.00% of overall range of fields) Astronomy (9px, 1.35%) Economics (16px, 2.40%) Law (22px, 3.30%) Criminology (77px, 11.56%) Meteorology (96px, 14.41%) Chemistry (156px, 23.42%) Marine Biology (166px, 24.92%) Volcanology (206px, 30.93%) Gerontology (666px, 100.00%)
