“This can’t be real, can it?” Oh, this poster is real and it is something to behold

You need to click to enlarge to truly appreciate what is going on in this poster.

What you see above is a poster by Manolis Kellis that was being presented at The Biology of Genomes meeting (#BoG22) at Cold Spring Harbor Labs. The conference ends in a couple of days (10-14 May 2022).

It’s pretty rare for a poster to get singled out by an organizer, but Kellis reports Luis Barreiro said at the conference introduction, “The only thing more full than the auditorium tonight is Manolis Kellis’s poster.” Kellis tweeted, “Ahem... you be the judge.”

Judgements did indeed come in.

I have reached out to Kellis for further comment. In the meantime, I just want to direct you to the responses to his tweet, which are Twitter’s usual mix of funny, sincere, upset, and a few other emotions thrown in for good measure.

Here are a couple of tweets that are not in Kellis’s thread.

Lior Pachter wrote, “This ‘poster’ at #bog22 is obviously some kind of a joke. But unclear what the punchline is.”

Arnav Moudgil wrote, "This can’t be real, can it? Can someone at #BoG22 share a picture of this poster actually printed and tacked up?”

Gregor Kalinat wrote, “If you ever wondered if plotting a whole poster session on just one poster was a good idea ... at least it seems doable 🤔”