This assay centers on how participants in peer review interactions employ laughter as a resource as they publicly declare divergence of evaluative positions, divergence that is typical in the give and take of joint grant evaluation. Using a conversation analytic frame, the assay explores the infusion of laughter and multimodal laugh-pertinent practices into sequences of talk in meetings of grant reviewers debating on the assessment and scoring of high-level scientific grant applications. The study centers on a recurrent sequence in these meetings, labelled the score-reporting sequence, in which the assigned reviewers first notify the initial scores they have assigned to the grant. It is shown that such sequences are routine sites for the use of laugh practices to navigate the first moments in which opinion divergence is made explicit. In the context of meetings convoked for the purposes of peer review, laughter thus serves as a valuable resource for managing the socially delicate but institutionally necessary mentioning of divergence and dissent that is endemic to meetings where these types of evaluative tasks are a focal activity.