Where is ErrantScience?

Hello 🙂

So this post is a behind the scenes chat about at why the site (and the socials) have been so quiet recently. The short version is: AI is bad, supporting other is fun.

Now for as long as ErrantScience has existed the core content has been freely available to anyone that is willing to spend the time enjoying it. I absolutely love making the content and provided people were enjoying I have, over the last 15 years, been very happy to keep making it 🙂

Now my primary way of knowing how much people enjoy my content was either views on this site or shares/likes/comments on social media. I don’t obsess over the stats but I do look at them and over the years it’s sometimes shaped what I do and sometimes kept me going when I was finding it hard to fit ErrantScience into my world. At one point I think ErrantScience’s regular social media impact was just shy of 3 million impressions a week. Which I have to say is very gratifying to have so many people regularly enjoying my terrible cartoons and even worse jokes.

But, social media in particular has always been a hard thing to manage. The death of Twitter meant that instead of one core social media platform I suddenly had to manage 5-6 platforms. Then the rise of AI has meant that those platforms are now hungrier than ever for content. When I don’t keep up with the post rate the social media companies want I quickly find my content being served to less and less people.

Added to that the rise of AI now means that my content gets very frequently stolen, scrubbed of credit and re-posted. This used to be a rare thing but now it’s pretty common for me to see my own cartoons re-made and re-posted as other people’s work, in my own feed. This one below from Instagram is a pretty good example but it’s one of so so many many.

All of which means that my content is reaching less people and when it is reaching people it’s a regurgitated AI slop version! Neither of which makes me feel all that great about continuing to put out the content. I was starting to feel like I was drawing cartoons for more AI accounts than I was for actual humans to enjoy.

Now as all this AI content navel gazing was happening (mostly in early 2025) I had an uptick in request for help with outreach and custom cartoon content. I’ve been asked to draw cartoons around chemistry, work practices, human augmentation, scientific writing and smelly explosives. All of which have been super fun, interesting and required zero social media sharing.

This culminated in my taking on the post of Director of Outreach in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Southampton. Where (as part of a research position) I support the School in doing as much and the best outreach they can. This means that while I’m still doing outreach and still drawing cartoons my focus is actually not trying to promote my outreach but trying to promote the outreach of a whole school of chemists!

So where does that leave ErrantScience?

Well still very much active, but more focused and a lot more quiet about it.

I’m still doing cartoon work and outreach work with schools, universities and other organisations. Just last month I very much enjoyed my annual 24 hour cartoon marathon with #RSCPoster. But there is going to be a lot less of it on my accounts, or on this site. That way I get to keep doing the outreach I love, but I don’t need to wrangle the Social Media monster or fight off AI mimics. Neither of which feel like battles I can win.

Sorry, I realise that’s not a great place to be for all the amazing fans that enjoy my content, who will now not see as much of it. I am working to have all of the ErrantScience archives, archived with proper DOIs. I am also always keen for others to share my cartoons themselves (please don’t feed it into AI and remove my name).

But, I’m still here, I’m still drawing cartoons and I’m still extremely grateful for all the love and support you’ve shown me over the years 🖤