Skeptical shirts for the real geek

What’s the stereotype of a geek? One of the typical traits that the general public expects of a science-friendly person, along with poor vision, a lack of social skills and no athletic ability, is an extremely bad fashion sense. Based on my own confirmation bias, I’ve certainly not noticed such a stereotype – if you have the opportunity, have a look at the core members of the Young Australian Skeptics, they certainly have some fashion sense.

However, it doesn’t matter if reality and expectation really are different, that doesn’t change the perception of the public. In order to make skepticism and science more accessible and friendlier to the average person, especially young people who are fashion-conscious, something has to be done to remove the stigma of the “daggy geek”.

We need to expose the nature of the real geek. Hence, I propose that every person in the skeptical movement buy at least one science t-shirt from following Awesome Science T-shirt Providers™.

isotope is a maker of great graphic t-shirts, and many of them include a scientific element to them. My favourite is the Tree of Life design:

Other great designs from isotope include Darwin’s Finches,

and the Natural Food Chain in German:

Another Awesome Science T-shirt Provider™ is Jeremy Kalgreen, who runs three different t-shirt design stores that promote science .

The first store is the appropirately named Science!, which sells a variety of designs based on the classic notion of curiosity in science – ranging from breeding dinosaurs to win dog shows, to blowing up the moon. My favourite, however, is the Germ Wrangler:

You’ve gotta love a t-shirt that depicts a scientist riding a giant Paramecium.

Another excellent design is Do Not Press:

I wanna press it.

Jeremy’s second store is called Teach the Controversy, and it’s probably the most skeptical of the three. All of the designs here are parodies of the pro-intelligent design slogan “Teach the Controversy”, which is applied to various pseudoscientific or antiquated ideas or urban legends, such as geocentrism, the luminiferous aether, the Hollow Earth, invisible unicorns and the Fountain of Youth.

My clear favourites, however, are Stork Birth,

Sun Scarab,

and Time Cube!

Jeremy’s third store is called Hirsute History. The basis of all the designs in this store is the facial hair of various notable figures in history, and while it’s not explictly scientific in nature, it does include a section on physicists, with such giants as Albert (Einstein), Marie (Curie), Michael (Faraday) and Erwin (Schrodinger).

Here’s a bit of Nikola (Tesla) for you:

So, see anything that’s caught your fancy? I know I was so smitten with the t-shirts from isotope that I recently bought this Mystery T-shirt Grab Bag. I’m sure the designs I’ll get will be excellent.

The skeptical movement needs to showcase these types of t-shirts. Now, I’m not saying that skepticism isn’t already sexy… but everyone could do with a little extra attractiveness, especially when we’re trying to impress a public with a biased perspective. Now go out and buy a t-shirt, geeks!