Many academicians seem to be part of a stodgy group that lacks a sense of humor, especially when it comes to academic writing. For instance, according to Jacobs (2014), "For academics, scaling mountains of social research papers can be an exhausting, dry undertaking. The sober jargon and conceptual leaps often fall flat, and there's rarely an entertaining or revelatory moment in the long trajectory from thesis to conclusion."

These observations suggest that academic papers are crying out for humor, but as Jacobs points out, "[W]hile humor is often seen as a useful variable for analysis, academics generally shy away from employing it in their own research. According to a new paper (aptly titled 'A Sociologist Walks Into a Bar...') in Sociology that puts up an epic argument for comedy's important role in social science [and that] sociologists that do wade into more amusing territory 'may find themselves dismissed as lightweight and trivial.'"

Indeed, a study by Sagi and Yechiam found that peer-reviewed journal articles that even had humorous titles were cited 30% less frequently than others: "Articles with highly amusing titles received fewer citations. The negative association between amusing titles and subsequent citations cannot be attributed to differences in the title length and pleasantness, number of authors, year of publication, and article type (regular article vs comment)."

Being a natural-born smartass, I've wanted to write something funny in research papers (when appropriate) as a freelance writer on many occasions but have largely resisted the temptation due to the above factors. When I was writing my own research papers in college, though, I'd use humor all the time to good effect but I knew my professors and they knew me so they weren't surprised and some of them even told me (albeit privately) how much they enjoyed reading them.

Moreover, all humans (even teachers == despite their stodgy reputation) appear to be hard-wired for humor. A study by Fry concluded that, "No person or group of persons has been found to be without a sense of humor, except on a temporary basis due to a dire personal or national tragedy which for the time being has caused an eclipse of humor. . . . This demonstrated ubiquity of humor is compatible with the contemporary view of how deeply humor is bred into human existence."

Certainly, there is no place for humor in academic papers about serious topics such as global warming, terrorism or abortion, but some topics readily lend themselves to humor. On the one hand, the temptation is real but the outcome remains uncertain in academia. On the other hand, there are always openings in Burbank..