After years of high attrition rates in its prestigious Molecular Biology program, Fartlek University has begun a collaboration with Netflix and Mr. Beast to overhaul the way they select incoming graduate students, called Plasmid Games.

“Everyone we admit seems fine on paper,” said Graduate School Dean Dr. Frontman, “but when you put someone in an actual research lab, sometimes the story changes. So now we’ll be selecting new PhD candidates from an actual laboratory-based competition process.”

According to the Dean, 456 initial applicants will be brought to the Fartlek campus for a week of competitive interview exercises or “games.”

“Our first game is called ‘Fire!’” explained Dean Frontman. “Basically we get all of them started on making a buffer or a salt solution and at some point yell ‘Stop, red light, there’s a fire, exit the building!’  Anyone who actually does exit the building is then locked out and the interview continues with those who stayed – because, you know, they behaved like proper grad students and stayed in the lab in a crisis.”

Dean Frontman, who also goes by the name “Administrator 001”, explained that there are several other challenges the group must then attempt. The number of surviving interviewees systematically decreases after each challenge by ruthlessly eliminating those who fail each time. 

Other “games” include: 

1) making a highly toxic solution with no protective gear or PPE;

2) group tug-of-war for the only working magnetic stirrer in lab (points off if the power cord gets ripped out);

3) attempting to cut tubing, filter paper, and glass plates with nothing but your own fingernails;

4) finding a DNA plasmid that has been lost in the lab freezer since 2010;

5) curing a major disease by the end of the week.

The Dean further remarked, “We hope this new ‘Plasmid Game’ process will help us select students who will get all the way through their PhD program, and simultaneously will crush the dreams of the rest of them so that they stop applying to grad school for fuck’s sake.”

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While searching the local environment proximate to their university for dinosaur fossils, a paleontology lab stumbled upon what appears to be a housing facility for graduate students in a local cave, indicating that this species has expanded its habitat as a result of high rents in the area. 

“Although no dinosaur bones were discovered in the cave, we found 3 old couches, a working television, 6 beds and several thesis manuscripts in various states of completion,” said supervisor Dr. Rachel Turnborough, “which contributes to our theory that the cave is occupied by graduate students rather than dinosaur bones, so we passed it off to the university’s conservation team.”

The conservation team immediately installed a motion-sensing camera, though it appears that it’s already been detected by the inhabitants, who apparently want to remain hidden.

“Anyone entering the cave immediately throws a coat over the camera,” said conservation expert Dr. Gregory Kant, who studies habitat loss, “which makes identification of the graduate students all the more more difficult.”

Dr. Kant believes that the new habitat may be a territorial expansion due to rising rent costs near the university.

“The cave is less than a mile from campus, where most graduate students on our campus couldn’t afford such a prime location given the wages of teaching assistantships. We found significant evidence of STEM graduate student occupation,” said Dr. Kant. 

“Old copies of both Nature and Science are scattered around the cave, along with reprints of a wide variety of other scientific publications,” Dr. Kant explained. “The coffee found in the cave is gourmet, and a number of administrative forms for teaching assistants and graduate assistants were also found scattered about.” 

“Also, there was a dog in the cave wearing a collar made to look like a strand of DNA, and it became quite excited when asked “Who wants to go to lab?”  said Dr. Kant

There were also a wide variety of phone and laptop chargers scattered throughout the cave, although they were not assayed for functionality.

Future work will include additional efforts to obtain photographic evidence of graduate students in the cave, along with attempts to find the electrical power source for the cave, which was still unknown as of this writing but is suspected to be solar panels hidden somewhere in the vicinity.  Although it is possible that graduate students only visit the cave occasionally, and naturally spend the bulk of their time in lab, the presence of so many beds and bed-like clumps of pillows and blankets does suggest that the cave is actually a residential dwelling rather than a graduate student “break room”.  The absence of a foosball table supports this hypothesis.

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The Turing Test – asking whether one can distinguish between a computer program and a human in a “blind” comparison, has long been an iconic “litmus test” for artificial intelligence (AI) programs.  In a head-to-head challenge, scientists at the Phulofit Institute for Computational Research have found that a biochemical research lab run entirely by a generative AI, without any human intervention or leadership, was universally and unanimously identified as “non-human” and “non-realistic” by every graduate student involved in the research after students at the AI lab had suspiciously optimistic responses.

Graduate students were sorted into 2 groups: the control group was placed in a normal, human-run biochemistry lab while the experimental group was placed in a lab run by an AI-lab head which directed the research.  Neither group was told the identity of their lab-head, and only interacted with their lab-head online. After less than a month, the students could easily tell the difference.

Remarks from interviews with students and in the lab run by AI included:  “I love working here.”  “This is the nicest place I’ve ever worked.”  “I feel like my suggestions are taken seriously.”  “This is like a fairy tale.”  “I’ve never felt so happy.”  “This is what I dreamed science was like.”  “There is simply no way this is a real lab.”  “I brought my dog to the lab and it was fine.”  “Please don’t make me leave when this experiment is over.”

In contrast, the control group, working in a productive and highly competitive lab with a human lab-head reported reactions including:  “I hate my life.”  “I don’t really understand the point of what we’re doing.”  “I’m so tired my skin hurts.”  “I don’t understand why my advisor hates me.”  “I suggested the same experiment to my advisor for three weeks in a row, and he just now suggested it to me as his new idea.”  “I feel so lost.” “I may have messed up some of my experiments when my tears fell into the samples.”

Institute researchers further noted that all of the biochemical data from the AI-run laboratory appears to be irreproducible, and that some of it seems physically impossible. In addition, they noted that the figures associated with the research group had strange, non-realistic distortions such as mice with large moustaches and giant testicles and phospholipid bilayers with dancing hotdog channels, among other irregularities. Despite this rather striking findings, however, and even more suspiciously, it appeared that none of the students in the AI run lab wanted to leave.

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As shown previously by several investigators, mansplaining is reflexive for many male-identifying scientists, with some scientists proposing that it may even be a natural instinct.

In this methodological review, we’ve analyzed the mansplaining literature and found that “discipline specific mansplaining” can have significantly more impact, but requires some rudimentary learning or training to supplement the basic instinctual behavior.  Examples of discipline specific mansplaining in four different research areas are discussed herein, along with step-by-step protocols for implementation.

For Crystallographers

More women are going into crystallography nowadays, and it’s important for their non-crystallographer male colleagues to mansplain their research to them – similar to how Jim Watson mansplained Rosalind Franklin’s work to her, despite the well-known fact that Jim Watson barely knew simple algebra and frequently confused diffraction diagrams with tic-tac-toe games.

It’s always best in a highly mathematical field such as crystallography to open strong with a broad-based statement like “It’s quite gratifying to see so many more women going into a field with so much math in it.”  This will disorient your female colleague momentarily as they try to parse whether this is a compliment or an insult (spoiler alert: it is an insult structured as a compliment!). 

Then you could explain that Fourier transforms are named after a French mathematician named Fourier, and that they are extremely complicated trigonometric sums of sines and cosines that somehow add up to a molecular image. 

When your female colleague gently reminds you that she teaches X-ray crystallography and generates X-rays in her own laboratory, be sure to tell her that X-rays are dangerous if not handled properly.

For Organic Chemists

With your female organic chemist colleagues, you must remember that these are women (i.e. people) who have access to harsh chemicals and caustic solvents.  Do not attempt to mansplain their work back to them while they are holding any sort of flask or beaker filled with liquid.  Remember that with proper misuse of interpersonal space, you can awkwardly trap them in conversation in a hallway, classroom, or seminar room. 

Take such an opportunity to remind them that organic solvents should always be handled in a fume hood, but do so in an off-hand, semi-passive-aggressive sort of way, such as:  “I hope the fume hoods are still working okay for you.  Let me know if not.”  This is especially effective if you actually have nothing to do with fume hood maintenance. 

Another useful mansplaining tactic for your organic chemistry colleagues is the time-honored game of alternate pronunciation.  If you are lucky enough for your female organic chemistry colleague to mention a named organic reaction during your conversation, be sure to suggest an alternate pronunciation: “I believe it is pronounced Grin-Gee-Yard by a lot of people.” 

It goes without saying that there is no need to have any clue what you’re talking about.

For Amazon Rainforest Fieldwork

Many ecologists do field work in exotic places around the globe, and leading and funding a data-collecting field expedition requires excellent organizational and research skills that are in no way gender specific.  However, it is still important that you explain to your female ecology colleagues that doing fieldwork in the Amazon rainforest is potentially dangerous – for a variety of environmental, cultural, and political reasons.  It should be obvious that it is best if you can explain these dangers to your female colleague immediately after she has returned from fieldwork in the Amazon, and before she can tell you about the several different dangerous situations she successfully mitigated during her recent trip – or better yet: by talking over her as she starts to tell you these things. 

Don’t forget to mansplain to her that the Amazon is named after an ancient female-led society.  Mansplaining the risks of fieldwork to a female colleague works best if your own research does not involve any fieldwork.

For Mechanical Engineers

If you are ever blessed by running into the rare and elusive female Mechanical Engineer, count your lucky stars.  Although she undoubtedly could run intellectual circles around you before she has her morning coffee, that is no reason not to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity for mansplaining. 

You could play the math card – we all know that works with any technical field, but why rely on that old saw for such a rare and special encounter.  Instead, discuss at length how engineering requires excellent three-dimensional visualization skills, and how men, by virtue of their hunter-gatherer evolution, have enhanced spatial perception and so it is extremely impressive that she is succeeding in the field. 

Or launch into a detailed explanation of how you changed your own oil in your car once, but then realized you’d actually filled the windshield-wiper fluid reservoir with oil, but thanks to your innate mechanical skills you were able to fix the problem (by buying a new car). 

Or let her know that your uncle was an alcoholic and also an engineer, and that has long left you with a nagging question of how hard a profession it really is. 

And don’t forget to tell her that most engineers work on military projects and then ask her how she deals with the morality of that (ask her this regardless of what she tells you she works on).

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