In the spring of 2001, the California Medical Association approached Charlie Varon about giving a speech. They were thinking comedy: Charlie would do a few routines over lunch to lighten up a seminar for physicians and attorneys.

Charlie had a different kind of comedy in mind. He proposed to do the speech posing as a ranking expert on human genetics. To Charlie's amazement, the C.M.A. agreed to the prank.

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To create Genome Out of the Bottle, Charlie assembled a team that included his collaborator and director, David Ford; humorist Jim Rosenau; and Jonathan Karpf, who teaches genetics at San Jose State University.

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In less than five weeks, Charlie created Albin Avgher, Ph.D. and his theory of human communication, supported by an intricate web of fabricated statistics and personal anecdotes.

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The prank worked perfectly, receiving high marks from conference attendees and press coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle and The Recorder.

Charlie has reprised the speech, each time fooling a new group. And each time, members of the audience have stayed afterward to thank him for his artful deception.