Fun, friendly JIR is a great escape from the harsh and the hassle. Benefits stretch far beyond the easy chair. Many items are perfect to post, or to show around, or to include in a presentation. Many spark new and interesting thoughts. Great gift for scientists, doctors, engineers, and professors. Subscribe

Welcome to The Journal of Irreproducible Results

In six funny issues a year, JIR offers spoofs, parodies, whimsies, burlesques, lampoons, and satires. JIR appeals to scientists, doctors, science teachers, and word-lovers. JIR targets hypocrisy, arrogance, and ostentatious sesquipedalian circumlocution. We're a friendly escape from the harsh and the hassle. JIR makes you feel good :-). Subscribe

JIR’s anthology is a fast-paced frolic of humorous and quirky tidbits in science, math, academe, bureaucracy, and witty wordplay. More than 250 entries ponder and pun the practical and peculiar. Edited by JIR’s Norman Sperling, published by Andrews McMeel. 289 pages, 6 x 6 inches (but only the dimensions are square), soft cover. A great gift! custom-inscribed any way the customer wants, $15.99 including US postage. eMail or snail-mail your order.

Contest: The Funniest Graph

The winner is All Theories Proven With One Graph by Don Grace of Florence, Alabama. Click the picture to see it in most of its glory. To get a copy professionally printed on paper suitable for a magazine cover, backed by page after page of more graphs and science humor, subscribe!

Second Prize: Nate P. Leon's Trip to Las Vegas by Keith Sealy, Austin, Texas

Third Prize: Comparing Apples and Oranges:  Normalizing Competitive Eating Records across Food Disciplines by Mike Wooldridge, University of California, Berkeley

And more ...

JIR is now the biggest part of Everything in the Universe.

Hi! I'm Norm Sperling, the editor since 2004. I've subscribed to JIR since the 1970s. I was assistant editor of Sky & Telescope magazine, and Science Editor of AltaVista.com. I teach astronomy in universities around San Francisco, wrote the book What Your Astronomy Textbook Won't Tell You, and co-designed Edmund Scientific's Astroscan telescope.

SiliCon, science fiction convention. Find JIR's table in "Science Alley". New and old JIRs, books, Spandex graphs, Bathsheba's math-art. Bring your camera: we have a JIR front cover that you can take your picture on!

Wonderfest, the Bay Area Festival of Science. November 1 at Stanford in Palo Alto; November 2 at the University of California in Berkeley. Find JIR in the Science Expo. Norm also chairs the 1 PM Saturday discussion, "Does Anything Happen at Random?". New and old JIRs, books, Spandex graphs. Bring your camera: we have a JIR front cover that you can take your picture on!

San Diego Science Festival. Performing "Irreproducible Results from the Journal" as well as exhibiting. New and old JIRs, books, Spandex graphs. Bring your camera: we have a JIR front cover that you can take your picture on!

JIR Changes since 2004:

• Articles from new authors.
• Updated graphics.
• Subscribing teachers may reprint for free one JIR article per semester for their students, if they cite the author's and publication's names, starting with vol. 50 #5.
• A few ads. We really appreciate your tips on who would be appropriate advertisers.
• 1-liner ads - 1 line, all the way across the page - for just $39. 1-liners are a great way to tout a website or a briefly-described product.
•  Subscriptions to JIR make great gifts!

Guidelines for Authors

JIR articles should be humorous. Appeal to scientists, doctors, and engineers. Make your points in good humor. Make readers feel good about having read them. Minimize bitter aftertaste.

The rule for length is simple: write it for what it's worth. Include everything that ought to be there, and then stop. Don't leave out anything that helps the article, but don't pad, either.

Parts of articles that deal with real science should be valid both in technicalities and in sense of proportion. 70% of JIR readers have doctorates - they can spot problems.

Many readers don't enjoy slogging through complex equations in unfamiliar specialties, so use only as much math as your points require.

Use the citation format appropriate for the topic.

Please include appropriate illustrations.

Each article is distinctive. Do what makes your article the best it can be. We look forward to reading your submission.

Let us produce your publications

We get the science right - and the wording - and the graphics.

We target your audience. We produce brochures, newsletters, magazines, reports, books, and website contents. We write, edit, proofread, lay out, format, illustrate, specify printing, print, and bind. We pay attention and work quickly, at reasonable prices. Tell us what you have, and what you want it to become.

JIR makes conventions unconventional!

Would your professional convention benefit from some humor? JIR can co-host a humor session, blending our half-century trove of articles with your society's wittiest presenters. JIR's session was a huge hit at FASEB.

All we need are expenses from San Francisco*, and a sales booth. We will consider any proposal or relationship that seems good for us all. *Near San Francisco, "expenses" are little more than a parking pass.