Quite a few years ago i devised an ambitious method to achieve significance while sitting through another braindead thesis presentation (psychology):
If you are interested in the difference of a metric scaled quantity between two groups do the following:
1.) Add 4-5 plausible control variables that you do not document in advance (questionaire, sex, age...).
2.) Write a r-script that helps you do the following:
Whenever you have tested a person increment your dataset with the persons result and run a:
t-test
u-test
ordinal logistic regression over some possible bucket combinations.
3.) Do this over all permutations of the control variables.
Have the script ring a loud bell when significance is achieved so data collection is stopped immediately.
An added bonus is that you will likely get a significant result with a small n which enables you to do a reversed power analysis.
Now you can report that your theoretical research implied a strong effect size so you choose an appropriate small n which, as expected, yielded a significant result ;)