A newly published survey of more than 500 science conference presentations across a two-year period set out to determine whether scientists are funny, which is itself funny, if not the most productive use of time. The results were about what you’d expect: two-thirds of attempts at humor garnered either polite chuckles or straight-up dead silence, and only 9% landed well enough to get most of the room laughing. The biggest laughs, also unsurprisingly, came from technical snafus, like slides malfunctioning and mics cutting out. (Nothing brings an audience together faster than watching something go wrong for someone else.)
Anyone who has sat through a conference on any topic, anywhere, knows scientists don’t have a monopoly on bombing. Humor is hard to pull off in front of any audience that hasn’t been warmed up. Even SNL calls its opening segment a “cold open” — the audience hasn’t laughed at anything yet, which makes that first laugh the hardest one to get.
Roughly 40% of the talks just avoided humor entirely, which is safe but probably makes for an even longer afternoon. More interesting — per science — it makes talks less memorable. “Despite the incredible wealth of interesting content at conferences, it can be hard to stay engaged. And by engaged, I mean awake,” one physician-scientist told Nature, which also spoke with one of the study’s eight(!) co-authors.
