Briefing Chat: Are scientists funny? The evidence is in — and it's no joke

0:00The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.

0:36Welcome back to the Nature Briefing podcast, the Friday show where we talk about a couple of stories we've read about in the Nature Briefing, which is, of course, nature's daily roundup of the latest science stories. And joining me once again is Maren Hunsberger. Maren, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Ben. Well, listen, why don't you go first this week? What have you got? I've got a story that I read about in nature that provides new evidence that the gut microbiome is linked to cognitive signs of aging. Brackets in mice. Double underlined as we always do. Right. So you and I have both been microbiologists in a former life, and there is a growing body of correlative evidence in many cases that there is this link between the microbes that live in the gut and effects on other parts of the body, particularly the brain, for example.

1:17Yes. And this is a new way into this investigation. So the researchers housed old mice and young mice together. And the old mice had started to indicate signs of cognitive decline in relation to their memory. And I have to ask then, how does one go about testing what a mouse can remember? This is a great question. Often it's on timed maze trials. So if you put a mouse through a maze and they can do it faster, you know, after the first time, it means that they've remembered something about the maze. You can also introduce them to a variety of objects and then introduce new objects every time. If they spend the same amount of time investigating old objects and new objects, it means they probably can't really remember the old objects.

1:54So once these mice had been cohabitating for a while, the young mice and the old mice, what the researchers say if we were to translate over into human years would be someone in their teens and someone in their later 50s, the young mice started to indicate the same symptoms of cognitive decline in memory. And we've set this up as a microbiome-based story, so I'm guessing then that the researchers think that this has something to do with that. Yes. So what had shifted for those young mice was their gut microbiome, which through close habitation with the older mice had shifted to more closely resemble that older gut microbiome.

2:25Okay. And I think we've set up that this is in mice, double underlined. Does this mean that the same thing might happen in humans? Not so much, Ben, because humans don't tend to eat each other's feces. Mice do. So that's how that gut microbiome shift takes place under close cohabitation. Now, as you and I both know, Ben, most microbiome studies are typically correlative. So we see an association between two factors. These researchers really wanted to start to explore causality. Was the shift in microbiome causing the shift in cognitive function? And to do this, they looked at it from a couple of different ways.

2:57One, they implanted a specific bacterium that they had honed in on, it's called Parabacterioides Goldsteini, into young mice and saw that it worsened their ability to remember objects that they had seen before. Then they came at it from the opposite direction, giving old mice antibiotics that completely wiped out their gut bacteria or a phage therapy that specifically targeted this P. Goldstein I bacterium. And that improved the animal's performance on memory tasks to levels comparable with those of young, healthy mice. So this is potential causal evidence. There's also a whole dimension of exploration in this paper on why the change in gut microbiome may be causing this cognitive effect.

3:34And the researchers think it might be because of what this bacterium produces, which is lots and lots of medium chain fatty acids. This in turn activates an immune response, which seems to suppress activity along the vagus nerve, which is that big main nerve that sends signals back and forth between your gut and your brain. And obviously, we're being cautious here to link mice and humans, but a lot of these parts do exist, right? We have a brain and we have a gut and we have a vagus nerve. So is there any lines that can be drawn between the two? These researchers indicate that this line of inquiry is something that should next be translated into humans.

4:10Humans do have a gut brain axis. We do send signals back and forth along the vagus nerve. So this will be a really interesting target for further investigation in humans to see if maybe a dietary change as we age could provide a shift in gut microbiome that might affect cognitive decline. Or maybe even a targeted phage therapy like what they did in some of these mice trials. And what are researchers then saying about their results? Other scientists, when commenting on this work, like John Kryan, a neuroscientist at University College Cork, has said that this is concrete evidence that the microbiome is really important for brain aging.

4:43So it's just another dimension of how and why this might be happening that we could use for potential therapeutic targets. Well, seemingly more evidence then that the microbes in our guts maybe do have an effect on disparate parts of the body. So I want to keep an eye on there, certainly. Let's move on to my story this week, and it couldn't be more different. Maren, you and I are naturally hilarious. I think that's fair to say. That's very kind of you, Ben. I would like to think so. Listeners won't know, but we gave a talk to the rest of the department this week. And my goodness, rolling in the aisles.

5:14Absolutely brought the house down. And I think everyone knows a good joke can liven up a talk, an academic talk. But it appears that good jokes are in short supply, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and a news article I read about in Nature. Oh, no. This may be the best slash worst headline ever. Breaking news. Scientists aren't funny. Scientists can be funny. Oh, we have the potential. Great. You have the potential to be funny. And I think in this case, you know, we are talking about academic talks. And I'm sure many folk listening today will have given one of those.

5:47I've given many and they can be absolutely terrifying, right? Standing up in front of your peers and showing your evidence of whatever it is you're talking about. Scary stuff. And of course, some folk, you know, enjoy maybe cracking a joke to try and lighten the mood or relax themselves, whatever it may be. I think we've all been in situations where that's happened. And this is also the case for Victoria Stout, a researcher who is taking notes about jokes at a conference to stave off boredom, the article says. And this became a team effort that is now a peer-reviewed paper on this topic. That's so impressive.

6:21The conference was so boring, they had to study why. And not just this conference. It turns out they've collected loads of data, 531 talks from 14 biology conferences held between 2022 and 2024. And the team logged 870 attempts at humour. Oof, ouch, an attempt. I know, it's a wonderful way of describing it, isn't it? And they identified an attempt at humour through signals such as a speaker pausing for a laugh. And we've all been in situations where you've done that and it's fallen flat, right? Again, oh, the bombing. I'm feeling some secondhand embarrassment. Absolutely excruciating, right? So this is what they were looking at.

6:59And they've combined their data and they show that two thirds of attempts at humor fell flat. So maybe drawing a polite chuckle or no laughter at all. Wow. I was going to ask, I mean, humor is so subjective. How do you determine whether something was funny or not? Well, by do folk laugh, you know, and yeah, two thirds didn't work. Only 9 % had everybody in fits. And most of these jokes overall were at the start or the end of the talks. A lot of them were largely improvised due to a slide malfunction or, you know, something like that. Like a spare of the moment, the pointer hasn't worked. Something's gone wrong.

7:33And I think it's worth saying that overall 40 % of talks didn't try jokes. I think that's fair enough, right? Some people just want to present their data and that's absolutely fine, of course. And some science is pretty hard to sneak a joke into, you know, depending on what you're talking about may not be appropriate. Well, this is absolutely true. But Victoria Stout says that even subdued laughter shouldn't be considered a failure, saying that it can help people relax. And sometimes humor can be a welcome change to the energy in the room, help refocus the mind. I think we've all been at a conference, maybe where you're speaking just before lunch, or you're the very last talk on the very last day.

8:09Everyone's mind is elsewhere. And perhaps a little joke can just help bring folk back into the room. And in fact, there is another researcher quoted in this article saying that it can help boost audience attention. I mean, this makes sense to me. You got to sort of bounce people out of their lull sometimes. And there is some evidence that laughter can enhance learning. And one study showed that research papers with humorous titles do have a citation advantage, I guess, because maybe you're more likely to share the joke, for example. And hey, anecdotal evidence, those are the paper titles that I remember.

8:37I still remember some of the ones that really stuck with me because they were funny. Exactly right. And humor, I guess, can be looked down on because, you know, science capital S, is important and the two things should be mutually exclusive. Yeah, I mean, nobody should force it if it doesn't feel natural to them or it's not appropriate for the work, but it's a shame to see humor as lessening the impact of the science, especially if, as you say, it might help someone absorb the material. So did the researchers have any other tips? Oh, did they? Right. So Victoria Stout, as well as being a researcher, is part of an improv theater troupe called stem fatales which is a wonderful name and has come up with a few top tips and i shall read them out from the nature article the first is authenticity is key which is what we've talked about there if you're super sarcastic and mean that's not going to be appropriate the next one is use humor to connect with the audience not to isolate them i'm a fan of self-deprecating humor i'm just not very good at it the third one is that scientists respond well to puns they also like analogies.

9:39Now that to me sounds like the nature podcast. We're doing it, Ben. We're implementing the tips and we didn't even know it. Well, quite. And the next one is people relax with a joke attempt that primes the way for successful jokes later. And finally on the list, scientists have had incredibly interesting lives and humor comes from the reality of our lived experience. Therefore, you are funny. That just made me smile. Not you, Maren. You're not funny. Ben, ouch, too mean. The tips say don't be mean. Very true. I should take the advice of the article, which we will link to in the show notes. The takeaway message is be yourself and you'll be funny.

10:15And just hope nobody's in the audience taking notes about the jokes that bomb. Let's leave it there for this week. I've been Benjamin Thompson. Maren Hunsberger, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me.

10:27The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.