This series by Derek Lowe is absolutely some of the funniest hard science writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading. That may sound like a low bar but make no mistake, this is truly great stuff. I've read the entire series of 33 articles going back over two decades and I only wish there was more (Derek is regular columnist but only occasionally posts new entries in this series).

Here's a good starting point: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-here-compound... and a direct link to an index of just his "Things I Won't Work With" posts: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo...