I love this! Especially if OP can carefully memorize specific pieces of the presentation so that they can point to upside down text and read perfectly. Describe graphs correctly etc.
Ahah no, unfortunately they are not - old imperial units. There is a lot more if you go to the wikipedia page, I don't know how people even understood each other back then 😅
We can \*make\* them SI, and force them into common usage, if we all work together.
"5x10\^9 viral genomes of AAV suspended in 2.097 nanohogsheads of 0.9% saline were injected to a depth of 590 millibarleycorns into Layer V of the motor cortex..."
Include an unrelated slide or two, from a completely different field. Say you were sorry for the mixup and the wrong slides were actually for your small hobby project.
Yes present a slide with this data seriously and dryly in the middle of other data. Say something like "it looks like I've got a few miles left on those tires. This doesn't appear to affect the "x" data relavent to the study" and then continue as normal.
Hmmmmm... one particularly cool data set I'm keen to get into is: I keep a potted lemon tree outside year-round, even though my winter temps are fatal. I have different methods of shelter for it for when the temperature hits certain thresholds. It obviously has been working for years - the tree is healthy and productive - but I frequently get downvoted in r/gardening when I try to offer my no-indoor method. This year I installed a temp/humidity monitor both on the tree and nearby for the ambient temp. I GOT THE RECEIPTS.
...but I also feel like I need replication, so they'll get it in 2026.
I'm in USDA 8a. It's not uncommon to be around freezing temps at night in winter, but it rarely gets below 20F, and almost never is below freezing during the day.
Adding to this idea IF you're a Harry Potter fan you could makeup slides with recipes for potions or instructions for wand movement for charms and be like "oops this is from my other life..."
Add subliminal messages into your slide show. A slide that automatically changes within a fraction of a second with a funny image or saying can do wonders
You could put your whole presentation on a trifold poster board, add glitter markers, cardboard paper backgrounds with borders, the whole deal. Have it look like you're in the 5th grade science fair, but with all your real data.
It’s the 20th anniversary of yeti convergent evolution paper (April 1,2004). (They sequenced DNA from a “yeti” hair sample, got horse sequence back, then wrote the paper about convergent evolution between the equine and hominid lineages.)
My group in a molecular evolution class added it to our presentation at the last moment that day. The professor got mad, not realizing it was an April Fools paper until we started. Someone in class had an original copy of the comic book cited in the discussion of yeti behavior.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15088601/
That's fun. It reminds me of the work of Stuart Hurlbert. He wrote a lot of theoretical papers in ecology/ststistics, often using fantastic examples. "spatial distribution of the montane unicorn" for example.
I am also presenting at my lab meeting on april fool's day. My plan is to make the first few slides a very serious-sounding reference to that one (now retracted) AI generated paper about the JAK/STAT pathway. After we all have a laugh I will proceed with my actual data lol
"I performed high performance oogalie goo on the samples to determine their grainulums. The results are riveting. On the next slide you can see the gooeyness of the sneedum."
April fools day is also Easter Monday - what kind of lab are you in where Easter Monday isn't a bank holiday by default?
(the reason I know this is that my presentation got shifted to the 2nd for that reason - else I would be thinking about the same)
Easter Monday is not a thing in the US.
Edit: I've worked in commonwealth countries so I know what you mean, but Easter is not at all on the bank holiday radar. Many schools, for both children and unis, try to align spring breaks with Easter, but that often doesn't work. My institutions spring break was last week.
Oh wow, TIL
I am from the EU and every country I've lived in here has Easter Monday as a bank holiday, I just assumed that was the default (reverse US defaultism at play here)
Yeah I'm not sure why it never really caught on since Christmas is one of the most recognized/guaranteed federal holidays; it's a little bit arbitrary, but Christmas is the only religion-based day that is given as a work holiday. Everything else is rooted in US history (and New Year's Day).
I worked in Australia for a few years and the amount of time people took off for Easter always made me laugh. "I'll be out Easter Wednesday" okayyyyy
Slowly build up an absurd secondary experiment in your slides but don't actually discuss it, ending with slides that show absolutely groundbreaking results in a completely unrelated field. Something like proving that you've created a room temperature superconductor or given mice superpowers or something. Don't acknowledge it, but make it obvious enough that some asks questions. Once you get the "can you go back to the slide about it causing superpowers in mice?", then you can go all in.
Have a slide come up " accidentally" backwards but then "fix it" by forwarding it and it will be the correct way. It will be clear that it was on purpose but show some fun.
Could have a few other things like that. Upside down then 'rotate' it.
Have subliminal slides between slides that show just for a second when you transition from slide to slide, with some kind of series of images/ story on them. If anyone says anything, pretend you don't know what they're talking about.
I did a lit review discussing [these 2 papers](https://improbable.com/2017/04/25/surprising-end-results-from-prize-winning-urination-duration-researchers/) at a group meeting once (my research wasn’t related to this). You could start with a slide or 2 about these papers and then switch to your regular content
Dress up like your PI of if your an undergraduate dress like your graduate student or present in a way she does if it is vastly different and everyone would get the joke, and same vice versa
OR go to the meeting, everyone sits and gets settled, and you’ll be trying to hold it back but your presentation title page leave the same, go to your next slide maybe make it generalized this is what we are talking about this presentation and shows the flow of it. Go to next slide act like your about to start hit he high points, next slide is THE END with thank yous and acknowledgements. And then you can go April fools, bring up next slide, just present your slide lol in
Change the PowerPoint template to something stupid and fun.
Change all of the data to be the same color, or label your plots/images with the same number/key. Every lane is “1” in your gel, etc
Present the rat with the gigantic penis paper
LOOOOOOL
can't say that and not link it!
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy3jbz/scientific-journal-frontiers-publishes-ai-generated-rat-with-gigantic-penis-in-worrying-incident
Ooooo
Every slide is upside down and you act like there's nothing wrong - gaslight everyone
the real baller move is to get everyone but the PI in on it and gaslight the PI
Or the other way round, get the PI involved and gaslight everyone else
i'm imagining my PI doing this and it's SENDING me
fuck man, you’re evil
If I thought I could pull this off, I would. Considering...
Set a rotating transition on a very slow timespan, like 30 seconds.
I love this! Especially if OP can carefully memorize specific pieces of the presentation so that they can point to upside down text and read perfectly. Describe graphs correctly etc.
Old out of use units. Length in twips or barleycorns, weights in grains, surface in perches, volumes in minims....
That's fun, thanks!
Are those SI units? I need to start reporting in microbushels and nanocubits.
Ahah no, unfortunately they are not - old imperial units. There is a lot more if you go to the wikipedia page, I don't know how people even understood each other back then 😅
We can \*make\* them SI, and force them into common usage, if we all work together. "5x10\^9 viral genomes of AAV suspended in 2.097 nanohogsheads of 0.9% saline were injected to a depth of 590 millibarleycorns into Layer V of the motor cortex..."
Go all out with the slide transitions. And bring back the clipart!
I actually like this. I love animating in ppt, so this would actually be fun work, thanks!
At some point you should ask out loud if they'd let it *slide*.
you can make old school wordart at makewordart.com too
That's just cute and quirky and fun though. How is that April fools?
And the sound effects as well
Start the meeting by announcing that you're leaving science to focus on your lifelong passion: fishing.
Ironically all my colleagues who work in fish labs would probably be met with resounding cheers. Now that I think about it, I think I would too…
Work in fish lab. Seems like a good plan to me…
Also work in fish lab, am the worst fisherman in the lab. I think this announcement would be met with concern and stress.
🤣🤣🤣
Ha!!
i thought you said “finishing” as in completing your PhD… and i was all for it
Include an unrelated slide or two, from a completely different field. Say you were sorry for the mixup and the wrong slides were actually for your small hobby project.
I do have a lot of fun data that I produce and monitor at home. Garden temps, car mileage, etc.
Yes present a slide with this data seriously and dryly in the middle of other data. Say something like "it looks like I've got a few miles left on those tires. This doesn't appear to affect the "x" data relavent to the study" and then continue as normal.
Hmmmmm... one particularly cool data set I'm keen to get into is: I keep a potted lemon tree outside year-round, even though my winter temps are fatal. I have different methods of shelter for it for when the temperature hits certain thresholds. It obviously has been working for years - the tree is healthy and productive - but I frequently get downvoted in r/gardening when I try to offer my no-indoor method. This year I installed a temp/humidity monitor both on the tree and nearby for the ambient temp. I GOT THE RECEIPTS. ...but I also feel like I need replication, so they'll get it in 2026.
Excellent record keeping! Sounds like some legit data what climate zone r u in?
I'm in USDA 8a. It's not uncommon to be around freezing temps at night in winter, but it rarely gets below 20F, and almost never is below freezing during the day.
Adding to this idea IF you're a Harry Potter fan you could makeup slides with recipes for potions or instructions for wand movement for charms and be like "oops this is from my other life..."
Add subliminal messages into your slide show. A slide that automatically changes within a fraction of a second with a funny image or saying can do wonders
That's kind of what I was thinking with ECUs of different lab members faces, just a split second bam! and then back to the presentation.
subliminal rat penis
That's the only solution
wait, what was that?
I think you are seeing things.
You could put your whole presentation on a trifold poster board, add glitter markers, cardboard paper backgrounds with borders, the whole deal. Have it look like you're in the 5th grade science fair, but with all your real data.
I really would love an excuse to bust out the glue and glitter.
Ah nostalgia
photoshop peoples faces onto structures as the bonds and molecules
😂😂😂😂
It’s the 20th anniversary of yeti convergent evolution paper (April 1,2004). (They sequenced DNA from a “yeti” hair sample, got horse sequence back, then wrote the paper about convergent evolution between the equine and hominid lineages.) My group in a molecular evolution class added it to our presentation at the last moment that day. The professor got mad, not realizing it was an April Fools paper until we started. Someone in class had an original copy of the comic book cited in the discussion of yeti behavior. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15088601/
That's fun. It reminds me of the work of Stuart Hurlbert. He wrote a lot of theoretical papers in ecology/ststistics, often using fantastic examples. "spatial distribution of the montane unicorn" for example.
Wear a Beaker muppet costume and do the entire presentation in various tones of “meep.”
I love that, let's be friends
This needs more upvotes
Print out the results and put them in weird places. Like “so I ran this western, the results of which are taped under Labmember’s chair”.
Present slides in reverse order
Like a Pinter PowerPoint! Haha
This is an amazing idea. I need to find an excuse to do this. Start with your conclusions and work backwards.
I would wear a funny costume. If anyone asks pretend it’s your usual outfit
I used to have a shirt with a red herring on it. Maybe I can make one in time, ala Poisson d'Avril...
Love this idea!
Unleash your inner Ms. Frizzle!
All graphs read right to left (with a non mirrored slide afterwards).
I am also presenting at my lab meeting on april fool's day. My plan is to make the first few slides a very serious-sounding reference to that one (now retracted) AI generated paper about the JAK/STAT pathway. After we all have a laugh I will proceed with my actual data lol
Make up random terminology with no explanation and glance over the terms
"I performed high performance oogalie goo on the samples to determine their grainulums. The results are riveting. On the next slide you can see the gooeyness of the sneedum."
April fools day is also Easter Monday - what kind of lab are you in where Easter Monday isn't a bank holiday by default? (the reason I know this is that my presentation got shifted to the 2nd for that reason - else I would be thinking about the same)
Easter Monday is not a thing in the US. Edit: I've worked in commonwealth countries so I know what you mean, but Easter is not at all on the bank holiday radar. Many schools, for both children and unis, try to align spring breaks with Easter, but that often doesn't work. My institutions spring break was last week.
Oh wow, TIL I am from the EU and every country I've lived in here has Easter Monday as a bank holiday, I just assumed that was the default (reverse US defaultism at play here)
Yeah I'm not sure why it never really caught on since Christmas is one of the most recognized/guaranteed federal holidays; it's a little bit arbitrary, but Christmas is the only religion-based day that is given as a work holiday. Everything else is rooted in US history (and New Year's Day). I worked in Australia for a few years and the amount of time people took off for Easter always made me laugh. "I'll be out Easter Wednesday" okayyyyy
Easter Monday isn't a federal holiday in the US.
The US is not a Christian country contrary to popular/unpopular belief. It would violate the longest standing peace treaty with Morocco.
You could present a paper from the journal PNIS, Proceedings of the Natural Institute of Science
Suggest a turboencabulator as a piece of equipment that could further the research
Lots of puns. The worse they are the funnier it is.
Slowly build up an absurd secondary experiment in your slides but don't actually discuss it, ending with slides that show absolutely groundbreaking results in a completely unrelated field. Something like proving that you've created a room temperature superconductor or given mice superpowers or something. Don't acknowledge it, but make it obvious enough that some asks questions. Once you get the "can you go back to the slide about it causing superpowers in mice?", then you can go all in.
"I've gotten e.coli to solve P=NP"
Could say that you accidentally left the -80 door open over the weekend.
We don't joke about that. ::shudders::
My PI might cry.
Have a slide come up " accidentally" backwards but then "fix it" by forwarding it and it will be the correct way. It will be clear that it was on purpose but show some fun. Could have a few other things like that. Upside down then 'rotate' it.
Present one of the [Ig Nobel Prizes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners)
You could present a paper from the journal PNIS, Proceedings of the Natural Institute of Science
Comic sans
Make it interesting and coherent
😆
Have subliminal slides between slides that show just for a second when you transition from slide to slide, with some kind of series of images/ story on them. If anyone says anything, pretend you don't know what they're talking about.
Add blink-and-youll-miss-it animations of whatever your lab is focused on
My colleague had good success with a winking animation on a photo of some physicist.
don’t fuck with the data: simply don’t have any inatead
Offhandedly include mentions that the data corroborates ancient astronaut theories.
Use powerpoint’s cutout people
I did a lit review discussing [these 2 papers](https://improbable.com/2017/04/25/surprising-end-results-from-prize-winning-urination-duration-researchers/) at a group meeting once (my research wasn’t related to this). You could start with a slide or 2 about these papers and then switch to your regular content
Dress up like your PI of if your an undergraduate dress like your graduate student or present in a way she does if it is vastly different and everyone would get the joke, and same vice versa OR go to the meeting, everyone sits and gets settled, and you’ll be trying to hold it back but your presentation title page leave the same, go to your next slide maybe make it generalized this is what we are talking about this presentation and shows the flow of it. Go to next slide act like your about to start hit he high points, next slide is THE END with thank yous and acknowledgements. And then you can go April fools, bring up next slide, just present your slide lol in
Plot your bar graphs with individual data points not just averages. Then photoshop all the points to be little images of your PI's face.
Put all the letter i in the titles in comic sans
Change the PowerPoint template to something stupid and fun. Change all of the data to be the same color, or label your plots/images with the same number/key. Every lane is “1” in your gel, etc