To engage audiences and help keep their attention, many public speakers sprinkle their speeches with a little humor. It’s a useful tool, but something that scientists rarely use, according to a report into humor at science conferences published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. And when jokes are told, they often fall flat, with most attempts earning only polite chuckles.
No matter how fascinating the topic, some science conference talks often drone on. So a well-timed joke can be a welcome way to re-engage an audience that is drifting off and make the content more memorable. To see how often scientists joke, when they do it and who gets the laughs, a team of researchers attended 531 presentations at 14 international biology conferences between 2022 and 2024.
They tracked the timing of every joke, the category (such as situational or science-related humor) and how the audience reacted. The team also recorded the speaker’s perceived sex, whether they appeared to be a native English speaker and the approximate stage of their career.
No laughing matter
The results were no laughing matter and probably what you might expect. Over 40% of speakers did not tell a single joke during their entire talk. Of those that did try to elicit a laugh, most jokes came at the beginning to break the ice or at the very end. The jokes that landed the best tended to come about halfway through a speaker’s talk.
There was also a difference between the sexes. Men told about 0.35 more jokes per talk than women and had a 9% higher probability of making the audience laugh. Likewise, native English speakers had a 10% greater chance of successfully delivering a joke.
Professional standing has no significant effect on how many jokes were told or how successful they were. Instead, the researchers believe that speakers with greater structural privilege, such as being male or a native English speaker, may feel safer about taking the professional risk of using humor in formal presentations.
“Humor may act as an amplifying mechanism—giving already-privileged speakers yet another tool to increase visibility, likability and memorability in professional spaces, potentially widening existing gaps in scientific communication.”
Even though humor can be more miss than hit at conferences, the research team believes a well-placed zinger can turn an otherwise forgettable talk into one people can enjoy: “We nonetheless recommend and encourage the use of humor in scientific presentations, provided it is delivered with care and appropriateness.”
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Publication details
Stefano Mammola et al, Statistically significant chuckles: who is using humour at scientific conferences?, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.3000
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