Murtough, S. et al
A key part of the scientific method is writing stuff down. But as each pen runs dry (or is lost while developing western blots), there’s little grant funding to replace them. We propose turning our attention to conferences.
Think about it: you’re sipping free (very good) conference coffee, and you notice rows of pens arranged in a double helix shape on a pop-up table. You casually pick one up – it’s even lighter than a pipette! – and you put it in your pocket. You keep doing this until you have 16 pens.
Then one of them leaks, and you leave another at the hotel bar – you even give a few away just to get free entry into a club. At best, you’re left with 2 pens (and one of them probably won’t work). Therefore, we recommend this protocol to get enough pens to last you a lifetime, or at least until you graduate. You’ll need a free conference bag, your conference poster, and some running shoes.
Protocol:
1) Approach table with pens.
2) Distract vendor by asking: “Where did you do your PhD?” and “I know someone who went there, do you know [INSERT NAME]?” and “That’s a shame, how about [INSERT NAME]?” and “Are you sure you studied there?”
3) While vendor is distracted, remove your free conference bag containing your conference poster, and unfurl the poster to cover pens.
4) Ask vendor if they can read the conclusion of your poster from a distance of three metres – ideally, the font size will be size 2 or less.
5) During (attempted) reading, place hand underneath poster and scrape pens into free conference bag.
6) Sprint like you mean it, but please call over your shoulder to thank the vendor.
Using this method, we’ve retrieved over 3,000 pens from two conferences. It failed just once when the vendor was wearing very strong glasses. We encourage scientists to start using our method, and we expect scientific achievement to explode as a result.
