Today’s episode of “Dinosaur Comics” finds our hero T-Rex a bit flustered over the idea of cargo cults. For those not in the know (which is probably everyone), let’s listen as our protagonist recounts a gripping tale of war:

During the war, the islanders would see this cargo going to the troops and would grow to believe that the gods meant it for them — that the white people were just getting it sooner because of their influential rituals. And of course, after the war ended and the troops left, the cargo stopped being dropped too.

The islanders started mimicking what they’d seen the troops doing!

The result was ersatz marches, imitation airstrips walkie talkies made out of wood and bamboo, and even torch signal flares, used to signal divine planes that never come!

Some internet snooping revealed, without much trouble, the Wikipedia article and (thank Jason for this trend) the generic first-New York Times-reference-ever: The Lure of Remote Places.

Surprisingly, the term shows up about once or twice per year, but (especially more recently) not with the original definition. Instead, the phrase has expanded in meaning, encompassing any situation (as per Wikipedia) whereby ill-considered effort and ceremony takes place but goes unrewarded due to a flawed model of causation. For example, from the New York Times’ obituary for Dr. Richard Feynman:

Dr. Feynman was no mystic, and he despised all kinds of fake learning, particularly pseudo-science. In that category he placed a good part of modern psychology, calling it ”cargo cult science.”

Dr. Feynman describes the cargo cult phenomenon following World War II, then continues:

It is the same, he said, with cargo cult scientists. ”They follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential because the planes don’t land.”

It’s CRAZY!