The speakers of some 40% of talks surveyed made no attempts at humour, not even puns. Credit: Getty
Everyone knows that a good joke can liven up a talk. Sadly, however, good jokes are in short supply — at least according to a survey of more than 500 presentations at biology meetings1.
Two-thirds of the attempts at humour during these talks fell flat, drawing either polite chuckles or no laughter at all. Almost one-quarter of attempted jokes were judged as a “moderate success”, eliciting audible laughter from around half the audience. Only 9% prompted most or all of the attendees to laugh enthusiastically. In fairness, 42% of jests were spontaneous remarks relating to glitches in presentations, such as slide malfunctions, that were not intended to bring down the house. And audiences might not have expected jokes, making it harder to get them to laugh.
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Roughly 40% of the talks monitored were humourless, eliminating the risk of failed jokes, but probably raising the risk of bored listeners. The work is published todayin Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“Humour is a skill that scientists don’t necessarily prioritize,” says Victoria Stout, a co-author of the study who performs improvisational theatre in a troupe called STEM Fatales (STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and works at Sacramento City College in California in a science-student support role. “I think they should,” adds Stout, who has some tips for anyone interested in giving it a go (see ‘Just for pun’). “More people will want to collaborate with you if you put yourself out there. It will be memorable.”
Are you kidding?
Stout was working towards a PhD in environmental studies when she started taking notes about jokes made at a conference to stave off boredom. This quickly mushroomed into a full-scale study with subterranean ecologist Stefano Mammola at the Italian National Research Council in Rome and other colleagues.
Between them, the team members attended 531 talks at 14 biology conferences held between 2022 and 2024. They logged 870 attempts at humour, which they identified through signals such as the speaker pausing for a laugh.
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Men were slightly more likely to tell jokes than women, perhaps because they felt more emboldened to take risks, the authors speculate. Almost 60% of talks included at least one funny moment.
“That’s higher than I would have thought. Good for the biologists,” says Taylor Soderborg, a physician-scientist and executive director of Science Riot, a non-profit organization focused on communications training, in Denver, Colorado, who was not involved in the study.
