I always think its nice to hear funny academic related stories when I have had a bad day in the lab.

I heard of this one guy who wrote a note in the middle of his PhD thesis to the examiner saying: "if you read this I will buy you a bottle of whiskey " clearly the examiner hadnt read this line but the smart arse thought it would be a good idea to point this out to him in his viva. needless to say the examiner wasn't impressed and he failed the student.

I put in my MSc thesis 'I would like to thank my wife who has been more useful that a spell chequer'

My supervisor highlighted the spelling mistake

I honestly think this thread is hillarious! sadly, i just can't think of anything funny going on over here...how sad.

another kind of funny story or call it a valuable lesson?

A post doc I worked with( well tried to work with) had a big row with my old supervisor. So she was in the process of writing this big long email to him at the end of which she said:

"If you are going to fire me, then go ahead I am already looking for a new job" ( clever girl )

what she really meant to say was "if you decide to fire me i will look for a new position"

Seen as I'm a nice guy I asked her to change this part and I reckon it saved here job.

I dont know why I ever did this seen as all this girl ever did was to make it her business to complain to my supervisor about me.

He has tried to fire her since then but was told by the univeristy it could take up to a year to get rid of her. Meanwhile she is still there and I am not ( without a PhD)

I suppose the moral of the sory is, being nice gets you nowhere in academia. Had I said nothing and this girl was fired, we probably could of got a post doc on board with the right expertise for the project and who might have been interested in offering support and guidance to first year phd like myself.

Well here is a story that I remembered. Perhaps not as funny as the rest.

I was in a meeting presenting a research paper as an undergraduate. It was my first presentation, and I was very nervous. I got to my method section, and described in great detail (about a 5 minute discussion) one of the scales used in my paper (how it was developed, psychometric properties, strengths and weaknesses).

Unknown to me at that moment, the guy who developed the scale was sitting in the front row.