Really? Huh, how strange. It sounds to me like a parody of CSICOP or the skeptic movement in general — especially as previously mocked by Robert Anton Wilson in The New Inquisition and the Cosmic Trigger books. "Dresden Codak" has dropped references to Wilson previously, if I recall correctly.
If I had to pick out specific personages being mocked here, I'd pick Martin Gardner or James Randi long before Eliezer. The "weather balloon" reference is specifically to UFO skepticism, which doesn't seem to be a big topic around here, but which was a pretty big deal for the skeptic movement in the '80s.
The scholars in the comic are being "pseudoskeptics", as Marcello Truzzi would say ...
Link.
To provide some background: Kimiko, the main character, is moving to Nephilopolis, where all empiricism is strictly regulated by the Department of Inquisition: "You couldn't so much as make an observation based judgment without a license." Since her bag is lost, she has no references, so she was rejected and is attempting to appeal.
My first reaction was that the Department is acting ridiculous. But on further consideration, given the futuristic setting, it would actually be quite plausible that she's a hologram or an automaton or something of the sort (I do wonder why they don't mention this hypothesis).
So, discuss! Just how ridiculous are they being? What do you think of this "credibility score" idea? Or, if you were to implement such a score, how would it be determined and how would it be administrated?
This comic was also a convenient excuse to offer my apologies for delays getting started on the sequence I posted about. I've been having a really rough time with some house issues, though it looks like the worst of it may blow over in the next day or two. I'm going to cautiously say the first post will be out early- to mid-next week.