Jekyll-Hyde Q&A

During the question-and-answer time associated with talks at conferences or in department seminars, have you noticed any difference in how questions are addressed to male vs. female speakers? By "how", I mean things like tone of voice and level of politeness/aggression.

This difference is one of those things that I keep expecting to go away with time as a result of the increase in numbers of women as speakers and audience members. It has definitely decreased in frequency but it has not gone away.

Something I noticed at a conference earlier this year was that audience members were commonly quite polite and encouraging of student presenters (of any gender). The fangs mostly seemed to appear when there was a non-student early-career female speaker: postdocs/research scientists, assistant professors, and even in one case an associate professor.

This is of course a completely unscientific anecdotal subjective observation. Nevertheless, over the years I have observed some mid-career and older male colleagues who consistently go through a sort of Jekyll-Hyde transformation when a younger woman gives a presentation. They are rude, aggressive, patronizing, and make it clear that the answers given to their questions are inadequate and probably wrong. They do not do this with male speakers. Ever.

I know that some male colleagues who also noticed this phenomenon and were uncomfortable about it tried to talk to at least one of these colleagues. I am curious to see if this criticism will somehow sink in and modify behavior.

A concern is that whatever subconscious impressions are triggering these negative reactions to female speakers also seep into reviews of papers and proposals, decisions on hiring and promotion, or any other circumstance involving evaluation of a less public sort. Or perhaps (total musing alert) it is the public nature of the rude questioning of a female speaker that is the (subconscious) goal, and private reviewing of a paper or proposal does not trigger such a reaction. I am just making this up; I have no insights into the psychology of this behavior. I have just seen it in action too many times.

I do not mean to imply that there is an epidemic of disrespect at conferences and seminars; in my academic world, there is not. In fact (silver lining alert) the examples I describe here are perhaps particularly evident today because they have become relatively rare. I am also encouraged by the existence of male allies who notice and speak up.

So: During the question-and-answer time associated with talks at conferences etc., have you noticed any difference in how questions are addressed to male vs. female speakers?

This Seems Like a Good Time to Mention That I Hate Your Work

Have you ever been attacked in a rather impolite way while giving a professional talk?

OK, so "attacked" is a bit of hyperbole. Let's say instead "severely criticized" or perhaps even "insulted". A few notches down would be "asked a question that may have been intended to humiliate you."

I have! Recently! In this case, the question/comment was of the "Your work is totally worthless and a waste of your government's money" sort.

But first, let's go back in time. Not long before I gave my very first talk at a conference as a graduate student, a certain scientist asked me an informal question in conversation. I said I did not know the answer. An hour or so later, he asked me the exact same question at the end of my talk, in front of a few hundred people.

I thought: What a jerk. I did not know him very well, although I had read some of his papers, so I didn't know what his motivation was in asking me a question he knew I could not answer. It could be that he wanted to humiliate me, although that is not my preferred explanation. My favored hypothesis is that he thought it was such a great question, he didn't actually care whether I knew the answer or not, he just wanted to get points for asking it in public. I don't know for sure, but I must say that I was never able to summon much enthusiasm for conversing with him, much less working with him, after that episode.

Since then, it has been my general impression that some people who attempt to ask "take-down" kinds of questions or who make vague derogatory comments ("Your science is completely worthless") aren't actually concerned that Science is being harmed by a misguided or ignorant person. Instead, they are seeking attention and just enjoying the sound of their own brilliance. That is: Enough about you, person who just gave a talk! Now listen to what I have to say even though I don't actually have much to say that is interesting, relevant, or possibly even sane!

But I could be wrong about that. And I don't really want to spend any more time discussing why some people are jerks in this particular way. (And I don't mean to imply that everyone who asks an aggressive question or makes a negative comment is an unreasonable jerk. In some cases these questions and comments are well deserved and useful.)

Anyway, when a very outspoken rude person attempted a take-down kind of question/comment during a talk I gave at a conference recently, I totally did not care. I responded with basic explanations and opinions to his "concerns", and that was that. What surprised me was the number of people who came up to me afterwards to tell me that I shouldn't let it bother me, I shouldn't be upset, I shouldn't worry etc. In fact, I was not bothered, upset, or worried at all.

I appreciated the concern, but then I started to worry that I might have seemed upset when this is not at all what I felt. I don't think I said or did anything that could be interpreted as my being upset when I was up on the stage dealing with the obnoxious comments. I felt quite calm, perhaps a bit impatient, but mostly I thought the whole thing was absurd. It was not a big deal. It upset me to think that people might have thought I was upset when I wasn't. Does that make any sense?

Perhaps people were projecting? That is, they would have felt upset if the Big Guy had gone after them like that?

And maybe these aggressive people serve a useful purpose? Perhaps it actually helped me in the long run that I was "vaccinated" against aggressive questions at my very first professional talk -- after that, I expect it. There will be jerks. They are just part of the landscape. Water off a duck etc. etc.?

Have you ever been experienced what you considered an inappropriate question or comment -- either in content or tone -- during a professional talk? Were you upset?

Have you ever experienced a rude question or comment during a talk?
	No
	Yes
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Why Did You Say That? (in your talk introduction)

A colleague recently commented to me on the tendency for graduate students to introduce their talks at conference by telling the audience that they are students. I had noticed this some (though certainly not all) grad student do this but hadn't really thought anything of it. My colleague didn't like these "I am a student" introductions because he thought the students were saying it to lower expectations or to try to make it more difficult for people to ask challenging questions.

In most cases, it was obvious from various clues (such as the list of coauthors) or prior knowledge that the speaker was a student, so why mention it?

Perhaps my colleague is right about the motivation of some student speakers, but I think there could also be more positive reasons for why a student would mention their studentness in the introduction of their talk. For example, they could be saying "I'm still a student but I was selected to give a talk to present my excellent results and I am or will soon be looking for a job so please pay attention because I am really good."

A possible argument against that hypothesis is that we couldn't think of any postdocs who mentioned their postdoctoralness in a talk introduction. Presumably this motivation would also be relevant to postdocs, if not even more relevant?

I have no idea what the motivation is because I don't think I ever introduced a talk this way when I was a student. I could be wrong because this was a while ago, but I am reasonably certain it wouldn't have occurred to me to introduce a conference talk this way. Therefore, to find out the answer (or, more likely, the answers), I am asking you, the readers who have done this very thing as students, what your motivation was.

And, to the extent that you can determine this, if you had a specific aim in mentioning your student status, did you achieve this aim?

You're Asking Me?

Earlier this year, I gave a talk at another university. Much later, I encountered the head of the department that I visited, and he apologized for missing my talk, explaining that he'd been out of town that day. He said "I heard your talk was very good", a nice thing to say, but not necessarily sincere, just a common pleasantry. But then he said something that surprised me. The very next thing he said was:

Was it?

I was surprised and just said something inane like, Well, I hope so. I got a lot of good questions. I enjoyed it blah blah blah.

Then he said I really did hear that it was good. OK... so why ask me?

Anyway, that was strange, but it made me think about how we feel about the talks we give, and whether this feeling (positive or negative) has anything to do with how most of the audience felt about the talk, at least during the times when they were awake. Of course there is going to be a range of responses in any audience to any particular talk, but I think we can still get a general sense for whether a talk went well or not.

I know people who always feel terrible after they give a talk, even if the talk was great (in my opinion). For some, the experience is such an anxious one, that is is difficult to enjoy the experience of giving a talk, even if the talk is interesting and presented well. I hope that for most people, this anxiety fades with time and experience giving talks.

Other people will give a range of responses when asked (by a friend or close colleague) how they felt about their own talk, depending on their perception of how the audience was responding. You can give very similar talks to two different audiences, and in one you feel like you totally rock, and in the other you feel like your talk fell flat. And sometimes you don't really know and just have a general sense that the talk went pretty well, but you don't really know.

The same talk can be a different experience in different places because there may be differences in your presentation style, your energy level (perhaps related to whether cookies and coffee were served just before the talk), and/or time of day (or day of week or month of year etc.). However, the experience is also greatly affected by whether the talk was on a topic and at a level that was appreciated by a significant number of people in the audience. I mostly use the number and type of questions during or after my talk as a guide to whether the audience is interested and if my talk is making any sense at all. I haven't found the facial expressions of the audience during a talk to be a very useful guide. And I am not offended when some people fall asleep, as long as most people are awake.

So: How do you feel your talk went? I think it is a strange question to ask someone you don't know well, but it is an interesting question to discuss among friends and colleagues.

Don't Fence Me In

This is self-centered and unreasonable, but when I am invited to give a talk, my ideal situation would be to give a vague title (Cool Science Things) that isn't much more informative than a list of keywords (cool, science, things). I don't really believe that people will come to hear me speak no matter what I talk about, so in my sane(r) moments, I do understand that a talk title is necessary to provide some clues as to whether a talk has any hope of being potentially interesting to those considering attending (for those who have a choice).

Even so, I like to give talk titles that are as vague as possible, so that I can give whatever talk I am most in the mood for when the time comes. This vagueness allows me to talk about the coolest (meaning: the hottest) science.

Some departments that bring in invited speakers want not only a title but also an abstract, presumably to provide further information for those who are considering attending, or just for general educational purposes. I always comply, but I don't like providing talk abstracts because I feel that it limits what I talk about, more than just a title.

So, I can write a brief, vague abstract, no doubt annoying those who like an informative abstract, and therefore still keep some freedom as to talk content. Alternatively, I can provide a talk title and abstract, and then talk about something different; perhaps not completely different, but I could add in a topic (or two) not mentioned in the abstract but still broadly covered by the talk title.

And that leads me to my question. Which is more annoying:

- A talk accompanied by a vague title and/or abstract;
- A talk that is only somewhat related to what you thought it would be based on the title and/or abstract; or
- Neither, you are going to be happy or unhappy, depending on how good or bad the talk is; it doesn't matter what the title/abstract were.

I Notice These Things Too

A reader writes about something puzzling observed during a talk.. discussed in Scientopia.

Woman of Few Words

Reminder: Don't forget to send in your entry for The Cover Letter contest! There are some great ones so far, but I am sure there are more creative examples lurking out there somewhere. 

Sometimes it seems like I could start 93% of my posts with "Not long ago, I was talking to a colleague and.." One might think that I spend a lot of time talking to colleagues. One might be right about this.

In any case, today is one of those 93% of times. Just imagine the usual beginning, blah blah blah..

.. and he reminisced about the time, many many years ago, when I gave an interview talk for a tenure-track faculty position in his department. He says he remembers my talk vividly. I do not remember my talk, vividly or otherwise. I remember the topic of my talk, but that's about all I can come up with for memories of that event.

Fortunately, my colleague's vivid memories are positive ones. One thing he remembers, however, is how short my talk was. In fact, it was 15 minutes shorter than any other candidate's talk. He says it was unusually short. Despite the passage of time, that sort of horrifies me, even though I know the interview had a happy ending (spoiler alert: I was offered the job).

My colleague hastened to tell me that he liked my talk -- and remembers it -- in part because it was short. According to him, I had something to say, and I said it, no more and no less. Everything I said was interesting. (<-- doubtful)

I could probably provide more insight into why my talk was so short if I could remember it more, but in general, talks that are unusually short are much less common than talks that are painfully or inappropriately long. Perhaps I benefited from that fact.

Unusually short talks may result when:

- The speaker freaks out mid-talk and decides to skip over a large(ish) section of the talk. (I don't think this has ever happened to me, but I have seen it.)

- The speaker speaks really really fast and therefore covers the planned material in much less time than intended. (This is not typically a problem for me, and it doesn't seem to have been an issue in my historically short talk).

- The speaker did not practice the talk and greatly underestimated the amount of time it would take to cover the material. (I always practiced my interview talks.)

- The speaker forgets to say a lot of things that s/he intended to say. I don't speak from notes, but I do typically have projected images as visual guides, so in order for this to have a significant effect on the length of a talk, there would likely be lots of forgetting of little points, not a wholesale forgetting of a major component of a talk. (Maybe I did this? I don't remember..)

I really don't know, but I can think of two other things that might have come into play in my case. One is that I had recently given a similar talk to an audience that interrupted me a lot with questions during my talk. If you go from such a setting to one in which you are not interrupted at all, it can affect the length of the talk considerably. Maybe I scaled my talk back, accounting for time for questions during the talk, but there weren't any (?).

Another possibility is that, for this particular talk, I remember that I merged several research projects into one integrated talk. I took some things from my PhD research, some things from my postdoctoral research, and some things I had been thinking about not long before the interview. I wrapped them all up together in what I hoped was a coherent package, and then.. well, I don't remember, but it seems that in the merging, I made the talk shorter rather than longer. That is, I distilled the essence of various projects (perhaps too much), hit the highlights without elaborating on anything in great detail, and gave some idea of where I wanted to go with this type of research in the future.

It seems to have worked in that case, but of course a danger of this approach is appearing as if you are not an expert in anything in particular and prefer to skim the surface of a range of topics. I was fortunate to have a friendly and interested audience in that case, but I can easily imagine this going the other way, and having the primary impression of my short talk be that I didn't have much to say.

It probably matters whether some in the audience know a great deal about your research topic, or not so much. In the case of my epic short talk, the faculty were conducting a search in a field that was not well represented in their department, so maybe it also worked in my favor that I didn't bore them all with the gory details of the research.

Mostly, I think I was just very lucky. A too-long talk is not a good thing, but a too-short talk also has many pitfalls. So, what to do? Perhaps the perfect talk is the slightly-shorter-than-most-people's-too-long talk.

Killer Questions

Today in Scientopia, I discuss a reader's question about how/whether students can ask aggressive, possibly undermining questions of speakers without appearing to be obnoxious jerks.

You're Invited

Speaking of talks, I am reminded of an invited talk that was given by an early-career scientist at a conference in the past year or so. I was very happy to see this talk on the schedule. I am a big fan of giving invited talk slots to the youngsters, as they might actually have something new to say, and I admire this particular person's work.

Invited talks by senior scientists can be quite interesting and useful as well, even if they are mostly a review of published work. But, as I've discussed before, there is a difference between giving a thoughtful review talk that integrates a lot of information and gives some perspective gained through time and a review talk that consists entirely of recycled, old material, resulting in a talk that could have been given at any time in the last 28 years and be exactly the same except for the number of wrinkles on the speaker's face.

The aforementioned invited talk by the early-career scientist was a big disappointment to me for the same reasons I have criticized talks by more senior people. It turned out to be a 'review talk', except that the amount of time represented by the work being reviewed was of course much less. The talk I saw could have been given 4-5 years ago. The figures were all excerpted from published work, none of the information was new, and there was no attempt to synthesize or reflect.

I wondered if my opinion of this nothing-new talk was so negative because I had higher expectations of the speaker than I would for a more senior scientist. That is, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if certain senior scientists gave a recycled talk, but I wasn't expecting it from this younger person, so I was even more critical than I would otherwise have been. Maybe.

So then I tried to think of reasons why this early-career scientist might have given a nothing-new, recycled talk. My purpose is not to criticize this individual (more) but to discuss the general issues raised (at least, in my own mind) by this incident.

I should note that the individual in question does not have a tenure-track job (yet) but is searching for one. This is one obvious reason why it's not a good idea for an early-career person to give a lame conference talk, invited or not, whereas a more senior person might not be harmed at all. But perhaps I am being too negative (again). Let's consider:

Reasons why such a talk may not have harmed the early-career person's chances of employment, with parenthetical statements undermining my attempts to come up with such reasons:

1. No one with any role, however indirect, in hiring decisions that could affect this person was in the audience (I consider this unlikely, but I don't know);

2. Even if there were potential future colleagues in the audience, they may not have been familiar with this work and so didn't know just how recycled the talk was (maybe.. but the speaker gave correct attribution to all the figures, and it was clear that they were all from a publication from > 4 years ago);

3. The main thing is that he was invited to give a talk, demonstrating the esteem in which he is held (I share this esteem -- even now -- but note that the conference session organizer is a friend/colleague of his);

4. It was just one talk; give the guy a break (OK, but I saw some excellent talks by other early-career scientists competing for the same jobs; to the extent that these conference-impressions are important, it's clearly better to give an awesome talk than a boring recycled one);

5. Maybe he was asked to give a review of his old work? Maybe that's what fit best with the theme of that session and he reluctantly agreed, although he has lots of cool new work he would rather have presented. (Sure, that happens, but I think if I were in that position I would be certain to explain the situation at the beginning of the talk. I'd say something like "I've been asked to talk about my work on xxxx, although most of that dates from a few years ago now", and then I would try to add something new -- make some new figures, synthesize some old and new results and ideas..)

If the individual in question was a tenure-track professor, being asked to give an invited talk, however boring it turned out to be, might outweigh any negative effects of having given a lame talk. Invited talks can be listed on the CV as such, and, aside from the possibility that a cranky letter-writer might have sat through the dismal talk, the most people reading the CV and making an evaluation won't know anything about the content of the talk beyond its title.

I don't have a problem with that. If the recycled talk was a one-time thing, it shouldn't harm anyone's career if things are otherwise going well. And if the recycled talk was yet another sign that an individual has not had any new ideas or results in 5 years, then there will be other evidence of that.

But: If someone who is still applying for jobs is given the opportunity to give a talk at a high-profile conference, whether or not the talk is invited or is one of many selected from submitted abstracts, if at all possible, don't blow the chance to say something new and interesting.

Out of Practice

Do you practice your conference presentations before giving them? What is your career stage?

In my case, I used to practice my conference talks, but now I never do, so for me, the answer was yes but is now no, and the change is definitely related to career-stage. I do not think this is unusual. Whether it is a good, neutral, or bad thing is another question.

If you used to practice talks but now you don't, do you remember when you stopped? I don't, but I am certain that I practiced my talks through my postdoc and perhaps for a while as an assistant professor. I just don't remember if I stopped practicing talks before or after tenure; I think it was before, but I am not sure.

Although I don't remember when exactly it was, I do remember having an anxious thought, just before giving one of the first talks I had not practiced, "Maybe I should have practiced this talk..", but I only felt that way the first few times I gave a talk I had not practiced. The feeling went away either because (1) I was satisfied with how the unpracticed talks went (i.e., I never felt after a talk, "OMG, I should have practiced that talk."), and/or (2) I am delusional about the quality of my talks.

I hasten to add that I typically finish my talks well within the time limit, so my lack of practice does not have negative consequences in terms of talk duration. Whether my talks are less coherent as a result of not-practicing: I'm not the one to ask.

I am certainly not advocating not practicing, particularly for early-career people. For those inexperienced at giving talks, I have seen very-not-good talks (on the first or second practice) turn into awesome talks with practice.

I am also not saying that I don't put much preparation into my talks. I think about them quite a lot, and I run through various options for the intro in my head, in some cases jotting notes. I just don't do a practice run of the whole talk in advance.

For some people, practicing (and practicing) before a talk provides a sense of greater confidence about the talk. Each practice run might be slightly (or very) different, but by giving the talk in advance (to a friendly group, to your cat, to yourself), perhaps many times, you know how to pace it and you know how to deal with the all-important talk introduction and transitions between topics. There is no question that this is useful (and I think people presenting posters should also have a few introductory lines prepared). It's just that, at some point, some of us decide (for better or worse) that we don't need to do this.

Ending It

What do you do when you are giving a talk at a conference and you have a lot more to say but not enough time to say it all as you had hoped?:

Behavior 1a. Ignore the almost-out-of-time signal and even the totally-out-of-time signal and plow on to the very end as if there is enough time to go through every slide, including a text-rich conclusions slide (or two!), which for some reason has to be read, word-for-word, all the way through.

Behavior 1b. Acknowledge the almost-out-of-time signal but continue to the very end anyway, not skipping any slides, not even the conclusions slides. This type of person apparently speeds up, and perhaps occasionally interjects "I know I'm out of time, but..", and then they keep going. The fact that they are out of time does not motivate them to skip a slide, not even the conclusions.

Behavior 2. Don't skip any of the research info slides, but skip reading the conclusions slide(s). May show the conclusions slide, but say "I'm out of time, so I'll just stop here."

Behavior 3. Skip some or all of the remaining research slides, and go right to the conclusions slide(s) and read them aloud. (opposite strategy of Behavior 2)

Behavior 4. When warned of approaching the time limit, say "I'm just about out of time, so I'll stop right there", thereby possibly leaving time for questions and discussion.

Note that I am only considering the types of people who reach the time limit when giving a talk. Some people finish on time, and this post is not about them.

It is my considered but perhaps unreasonable opinion that it is the rare talk of 10-15 minutes duration that needs detailed text-filled conclusions slides. I typically find these boring and a waste of talk-time. Conclusions slides can be useful if the talk topic was very complex (owing to the topic or the lack of skill of the presenter) or if the presenter is not entirely comfortable speaking English, or whatever the primary conference language is. In those cases, a conclusions slide or two can be helpful for summarizing what was just presented. If, however, the text-filled conclusions slide(s) are just a summary of what the speaker said 2 minutes ago, it's a waste of time for a speaker to read them to the audience, particularly if there isn't time for this.

At the various conferences I have attended this year, I have seen all of these behaviors (and more? did I leave any out?). I always wonder what someone is thinking by going (way) over the allotted time, especially if they are given abundant warning, by automated signals and session leaders, that the time is almost up, and then up, and then more than up. There is one person I know who commonly talks for 20-30 minutes for a 12-15 minute talk, ignoring all of the increasingly urgent but apparently ineffectual pleas for him to stop. [If I were convening a session in which this person wanted to give a presentation, I would assign him a poster, not a talk.]

I am reasonably sure that it is rare for the audience to be thinking "Oh no! Time is up already?! I wish that person could on speaking for much much longer!"

For me, anyway, the main interest and appeal of conferences is not so much the details of what is presented in talks but getting a general sense for what is going on, having informal conversations with people I wouldn't otherwise interact with or even meet, introducing my students and postdocs to the wider Science World, and all that kind of thing.

It doesn't punch a hole in my conference experience if some speakers talk for a few extra minutes, but life would be a tiny bit better if fewer people did this, and especially if they don't read their text-filled conclusions slides, word-for-word, all the way through.

Question 1: Is it mostly the more senior people who go beyond the allotted time for a conference talk? I have seen people of all ages and talk-experience level go beyond their allotted time, but I think it is more common for more senior researchers. This may be in part because students and other early-career people actually practice their talks and therefore know how long their talks are likely to be, whereas we older people are more likely to wing it a bit more and/or to think that our every word is a precious pearl of wisdom.

Question 2: Are the professors who speak longer than the allotted time for a conference talk also the ones whose classes go beyond their scheduled time?

Who Talks?

Today in Scientopia, I address a reader's question about why an advisor would give a talk on the student's research instead of sending the student to a conference to give the presentation.

Talk Dilemma

Recently I was pondering my options for a presentation to give at a workshop in the coming year, and I came up with two possibilities. I have to choose one:

1. A synthesis of a long-running project, with some new (not presented before) results, and also a summing up of many of the results that I have presented elsewhere (piecemeal) in recent years, but in a more syn-optic way, with discussion of what we know now that we didn't know before, and what it all means. This work is cool but not controversial, has generated some interest over the years, and would be fun to present.

or

2. The first public presentation of a new dataset for a completely different project, with very exciting-but-preliminary results and possibly very significant conclusions. This work is cool and controversial, has generated some hostility and deep skepticism in the past year, and would be fun to present.

I feel like I should present option #1 because it is important to synthesize and present the latest and greatest results of just-completed studies -- that is, to follow up on all the previous "progress report"-like talks, and present it all as a beautiful and compelling story backed up by a fearsome dataset. I feel like this would be the mature thing to do, and I am completely happy to talk about this project, which still holds my interest.

But I have given a lot of talks on this project in recent years, and I think I want to do option #2 just for the fun of it. I am not sure I should let my desire for cheap conference-thrills guide my decision, but I just might.

Note: At least one more conference-themed post is imminent, as I've gotten interesting questions about conferences from readers recently.

He Said/She Crowed

Earlier this year, I went to a talk that mostly consisted of text slides. When I realized that the verbal parts of the talk didn't add any more information than what was shown on the text slides, I fell into the habit of quickly reading the slides and then doing some brain multi-tasking (day-dreaming, plotting etc.) until it was time to read the next text slide.

At some point, though, the speaker captured my attention. Part of the talk involved the speaker's opining about the work of others; e.g., "this person did this" and "that person did that". My attention was caught by the fact that the speaker described a woman as "crowing" about her particular idea.

Crowing? What did that mean? And if a woman was crowing, what were the men doing?

So then I started listening to what he was saying and how he was saying it. It was quite stark, the difference in how the ideas of men and women were portrayed. In the opinion of the speaker, the women "went on and on" in an "unconvincing way" about the topic in question, whereas men made "repeated forceful arguments" and presented "a strong case" for their ideas.

Even when the speaker disagreed with some of the men he mentioned, he said that he "respectfully disagreed" with them. The men "knew what they were doing" (even if they were wrong or misguided), but the women were basically just making things up without having "a complete understanding" of the issues.

It was not an important or interesting talk, but, for me, the speaker's choice of words rather effectively undermined his authority to give an informed or interesting opinion on his chosen topic. Once I realized his opinions broke down perfectly along gender lines in terms of the people he admired and those whom he denigrated, I no longer trusted what he was saying.

Of course, no one is truly "objective" when giving a presentation about ideas and results. We all make choices about what to present vs. what not to present, and we choose our words and tone and emphasis. We also commonly inject our opinions when discussing the work of others, either overtly or in more subtle ways.

Many professional talks include references to the work of others, typically listed on a slide as "Schmo et al. (2010)" or similar. In some cases the speaker may elaborate on the people involved, e.g. "this paper by my excellent former student, Bob Schmo". This is a normal part of many talks.

And of course discussion of the work of others can be critical, e.g. "Although Schmo et al. (2010) proposed X, in fact our data are more consistent with an interpretation of Z", perhaps with some details about how the disagreement or discrepancy arose. This can be useful for understanding the context of the evolution of research and thought on a particular topic.

It is possible to humanize Science (and even Scientists..) and to give some of the personal back-story of a body of work and even to criticize work (and workers) we don't like, but it is also possible to be professional and equal-opportunity-respectful about it. It doesn't seem possible for some individuals, but it is possible in general.

So, do I want speakers to "censor" themselves and "walk on coals" in professional talks so as not to alienate sensitive and borderline hysterical women who will then "crow" about perceived sexism, thereby perpetuating sexism, which would magically go away if women didn't talk about it (or whatever)? Yes, I do want this, or, at least, the first part.

Where You Sit

Once upon a time, when I was about to give an invited lecture at another university, my faculty host warned me ahead of time that the talk was in a very large lecture hall that was much too large for their department. Even if everyone remotely interested in our field of science from within a 50 mile radius came to my talk, the lecture hall would still have many empty seats. Furthermore, he told me, the graduate students would all be sitting in the last few rows and the faculty would be sitting in the first few rows, with a big blank area in between.

And so it was. It was kind of strange. In order to make eye contact with these two groups of people, I had to either look way up high to the back of the lecture hall or look down at the professors sitting clustered near the front. If I looked in the middle distance, I was looking at nothing, just seats.

This was an extreme case of a common phenomenon that I have seen again and again during visits to give talks at other universities. Professors sit near the front -- perhaps because our fading eyesight and hearing requires it -- and students sit in the back.

Although in other situations I prefer to sit near the back of a room, when I go to talks in my department, I like to sit near the front. This helps me focus on the talk more and makes it easier for me to be seen and heard if I ask a question. I don't know what reasons my colleagues have for sitting near the front, but that's where we professors all are during department seminars.

How divided is the seating in general talks in your department? Is there any place where professors sit near the back and students sit near the front?

How many places have total mixing of faculty and students? I had seen such places, but I think they are more rare than the professor-in-front/students-in-back seating arrangement.

If you are in a professor-in-front/student-in-back kind of department, do you think this is weird? cool? normal? Do you think there should be more mingling or are you happy sitting with your peers? If you are a postdoc, where do you sit? With the faculty or with the students or in between? (assuming you give it any thought at all)

I could do another poll, but I think I will just leave these questions to be answered in the comments today. An informal survey has indicated to me that people (other than me) have given this seemingly trivial situation a surprising amount of thought..

Impromptu Invited Talk

Imagine this general scenario:

You are at (or about to go to) a conference or workshop or similar, and one of the organizers tells you that a slot has unexpectedly opened up for someone to give a talk. S/he invites you to give this talk, and you do.

The question (from a reader):

Can you list this as an invited talk on your CV?

I have given a couple of these impromptu invited talks, and I have not listed them on my CV. But then, I am old and don't need to document everything like early-career faculty need to do.

So I asked myself: If it mattered more to me, would I include such a talk on my CV, and if so, how would I indicate it? Would I flag it as an invited talk? Would I specify somehow that it was an informal invited talk?

And I had no obvious answer for myself, hence this post to ask readers what they have done, if anything, about such situations.

When I was talking to myself about this (silently, in this particular case), I considered the pros and cons of listing informal invited talks on a CV, and came up with this:

Pro:

Even if the invitation was of the last-minute sort, it means that someone thought you had something interesting to say, and therefore listing the talk on your CV recognizes this fact.

You gave the talk. You should get some kind of documented credit for it.

For an early-career academic, invited talks are important for showing that you are respected and visible in your field. Of course, you may become even more visible and respected by giving such a talk, and perhaps that is 'credit' enough, but it can also be important to have such talks listed on a CV (because most people who review your CV will not have been at your talk).

Con:

It's a bit misleading to list an informal invite as if it were a formal invitation. A cynical person might interpret an impromptu invite as "They couldn't get the person they really wanted, so, out of desperation, they got someone else to fill the time."

If you simply list an informal invited talk on your CV with no further explanation and if someone took the time to search the relevant conference program and saw that you were not listed as giving an official invited talk, that could look bad. But I can't think of a good way to designate informal invites on a CV.


If you forced me to choose, I am leaning towards leaving informal invited talks off the CV and being content with the cosmic credit related to having been invited (even at the last minute) and having the opportunity to speak about your work.

If you think that the person who invited you is a fan of your work, that might be a good person to keep in mind for future external letter-writing (e.g., at tenure evaluation time). Then that person might describe what happened and mention the incident as an example of the esteem in which you are held. That's all quite hypothetical and less concrete than listing something on a CV, but it's nevertheless potentially more important (and accurate).

This all might seem like a detail, and some might say: If you have to worry about this level of trivia on your CV, you're probably in trouble.. but I disagree. CVs are scrutinized at various important stages of a faculty member's career. Many times, I have been one of the scrutinizers, and I know how important it is that CVs are complete, accurate, and unambiguous in their presentation of the essential elements of a professor's work.

Re-Recycle

At an international conference not so long ago, I saw a talk by a Distinguished Professor. The talk consisted of figures that he cut and pasted from papers he published decades ago when he was a hot young scientist doing cutting edge work. There was nothing new in the talk: not the images, not the science, even though this was not supposed to be a review talk. I suppose it was accepted as a talk at the conference because of the Distinguishedness of the professor, in honor of the contributions he made to his field in his academic youth.

OK.. I thought, as I listened to the boring talk, this is weird, and there are several possible explanations, some of which could probably be eliminated if I knew the Distinguished Professor personally (but I do not):

Hypothesis #1. He does have new results to present, but he just didn't have time to write them up by the abstract deadline, and between the time his abstract was accepted and the conference, he also didn't have time to prepare a new talk, so he thought he'd present his 'classic' work (which is indeed classic and much-cited) because it remains the best work he has done to date and he figured the audience wouldn't mind seeing it again.

Hypothesis #2. Similar to Hypothesis #1, but with the additional factor that he didn't think it was worth spending the time because most of the scientists in the audience were not native English speakers and he figured his old work was good enough for this particular conference venue.

Hypothesis #3. He actually hasn't done much that is worth speaking about since his classic work. He didn't want to present the results of his recent work because that would definitely be boring. So he had an idea! He decided to relive the glory days of his best work.

Hypothesis #4. Although by no means ancient, the DP has lost his mind, has impaired judgment, has been ill, or has some other tragic reason, beyond his control, for being unable to prepare a presentation of new (or at least more recent) results.

Whatever the reason, if it related to hypotheses #1, 2 or 3, it was a miscalculation. Oh, I am sure that his distinguishedness has not lost much, if any, of its luster, but there was quite a bit of murmuring at the conference about the boring, recycled talk, and some people were a bit insulted that he would present something so completely old for a non-review talk.

I kind of forgot about this recycled talk incident for a while, but a colleague (who was not at the international conference) recently told me that he went to a US conference and heard a talk by this same DP. My colleague was dismayed that the talk had consisted of nothing but recycled slides and description of old work.

This colleague knew nothing about the previous conference, and spontaneously mentioned his opinion when we were discussing what we might want to present at a future conference. My colleague had joked "We could just show the figures from our 1993 paper." What?? Then he explained, and I was amazed that the DP had re-recycled his talk.

But: At least I could eliminate Hypothesis #2 based on this new data point. The DP was equally willing to bore people at home and abroad.

It's impossible to know what motivated the re-recycling, or to know whether the DP was at all aware that his audience might not be fascinated by these presentations, but this incident relates to the general issue of how much 'old' material we can/should present in our conference talks.

When presenting new results from a long-term project, I sometimes worry about how much of the 'old' work to present as context for the new -- when you only have a short time to present complex results, every minute counts and you (should) want to highlight the new, but perhaps the new can't be understood without also presenting some of the old results. At the same time, perhaps a significant fraction of the audience isn't aware of the old work, and it would be a mistake to assume otherwise. (Note: A couple of years ago, I discussed a similar issue regarding invited non-conference talks and the eerie similarity between professors and rock stars).

From now on, I will probably have this DP re-recycling incident circling my head whenever I prepare a talk that consists of at least some old material. Getting the balance right can be challenging, but it is well worth thinking about during talk preparation.

Potted Plants

In the Sunday New York Times Magazine, "The Ethicist" fielded a query from a grad student who wondered about the practice of offering undergraduates extra credit to attend a conference hosted by their department. At the conference, "high-level" talks were presented; talks that most of the undergrads would be unlikely to understand.

The grad student thought that the undergrads were being exploited, as the main purpose of offering them extra credit was to increase the number of people in the audience, thereby perhaps convincing the university to increase funding for the conference in future years.

The grad student disapproved of this practice, and The Ethicist agreed, stating "You might as well fill the audience with potted plants."

Like many of you, I have given many talks attended by undergraduate students (and others) who did not have the necessary background to understand everything I presented. In some cases, these students were there by choice, and in some cases they were there for extra credit. Most typically, students lured by credit (extra or not) are undergrads, but I have also given lectures to audiences that consisted in part high school students who were required by their teacher to attend a Science Talk given by a Real Scientist.

Were these students potted plants? Perhaps some were, but many were not. The fact that at least some students are paying attention and trying to understand as much as they can is particularly obvious in settings in which questions are encouraged, even from non-experts. For students not comfortable asking a public question, there may also be opportunities for questions and other interaction after the talk. These can be very interesting discussions.

And even for those students who are unable to understand much of the content of a talk, there may be some value in attending a talk or a conference. In these settings, students get to see other academics in action, get a sense for the content and style of presentations, and observe how researchers interact with each other.

I encourage undergraduates who do research with me to attend conferences, including national conferences in our field. These students attend talks, many of which they don't understand, but they report being intrigued by the whole conference/cultural experience. I have also found that undergrads are quite adventurous about which talks they attend, sampling talks on topics that represent a wide range of sub-fields, to see what's going on, what's hot, who is interesting, who is not. Some of it is boring and much of it is puzzling, but it's also kind of fascinating.

I therefore disagree with the conclusion that undergrads who have insufficient background to understand high-level academic talks are passive potted plants, as many probably are getting something out of attending a talk or conference in their general field of interest.

Even so, to avoid the possibility of potted plant syndrome among extra credit-seeking undergrads being exploited by funding-hungry conference organizers, perhaps the experience could be enhanced somehow. Perhaps the students could be prepared in advance for some of the talk topics. Perhaps the students could meet some of the speakers after the talks for additional questions in a less formal, more undergrad-friendly environment. Perhaps speakers could be encouraged to spend the first couple minutes of each talk giving background information at a more basic level than they otherwise might. Perhaps everyone would find that more interesting.

I think the attending of talks and conferences by interested undergrads should be encouraged. I don't tend to give extra credit in my classes other than a 1-2 point fun/strange question at the end of exams, but, as long as extra credit isn't a significant portion of the grade, I don't have any problem with there being some sort of credit given for an academic experience that might well be enriching.

Self-Defense Talks

No, this post is not about the use of illegible fonts, invisible or clashing color schemes, text-filled slides, excessive animations, or even attempts at humor involving anatomical references that some of the men in the audience think are funny but most of the women do not (proving that women have no sense of humor). In the past 8 months, I have been in the audience of two different talks that attempted the latter, and many more that utilized the other design options.

But let's ignore those issues for now. This post concerns one specific aspect of how we answer questions after a talk: defensive question-answering.

Most of us have seen examples of defensive question-answering (or non-answering), but I saw a new variant on it in a recent talk. More than once, when the speaker was asked if he had done X or Y or thought about Z, he replied:

If I'd done/thought of that, I would have mentioned it.

That is a bad answer because it is a non-answer that will impress no one. Some people will assume you don't know the answer, and therefore possibly that your approach is narrow and/or you are not a careful researcher or deep thinker.

Perhaps those inferences are too harsh, based on what might have just been a throwaway line, but I couldn't think of a good reason for the repeated refusal of the speaker to answer thoughtful and polite questions by people seeking to better understand his research methods and results.

Why not answer the questions politely and sincerely, even if you think they are stupid? You could say something like "No, we haven't done that because..". You could even say "No, that won't work because.. [explain]". Be professional, be mature, and toss the question back with some information attached to it if at all possible.

I think these defensive answers would be unimpressive no matter how great the experience or fame of the speaker, but I thought it particularly unwise for an assistant professor to give these non-answers instead of attempting a thoughtful or at least more complete answer. If you are trying to build your reputation, build it from substance, not swaggering remarks.

Even if a question is an aggressive attempt to undermine you or show that your research is incomplete, there are numerous thoughtful and suave ways to answer questions of this sort. Last year, I saw a young professor parry the very aggressive and obnoxious comments of a Big Professor after the young professor's talk at an international meeting. It was impressive. The YP was very calm and polite as he responded to the Big Professor's hostile comments, showing that he (the YP) was right and the BP was wrong. The audience gave the YP a huge round of applause after the questions were over, and many people considered the exchange the highlight of the meeting, in part because of the cool and professional way that the YP dealt with the situation.

If you really have absolutely no idea how to answer a question, you could at least say "No, I haven't done/thought of that. I/we first tried [mention what you've done] because.. etc.". Perhaps you will be repeating what you already said in your talk, but that's OK -- you can turn the question back to what you have done and why you did it, perhaps clarifying the motivation, methods, and results of your research.

You don't have to give a brilliant answer to every question, but a serious answer with substance is preferable to an aggressive non-answer.

It's Not About You

At a conference earlier this year, I went to some talks on a research topic that is only sort of related to what I do. That is, I am not directly involved in any of the research presented, nor are any of my close colleagues, but I'm moderately interested in research in this field and I wanted to see what was new and interesting.

The strongest impression that I took away from the talks was not about any new or interesting results, but about how the research was presented. The research topic is one that involves many different research groups from all over the world. These groups, some of which do not have very collegial relationships with each other, have been working on this research topic for a long time. There is a long long history of research and debate on this topic.

At the conference, the talks I attended were dominated by the history of the research groups: who did what when, who said what when, who was right, who was wrong (in the opinion of the speaker), and who was redoing the flawed work of others using a new and better approach.

This made me think. Certainly we should not ignore the relevant work of others when talking about a particular topic, but there's a difference between presenting research as if it is motivated by the personalities involved (who is right/wrong) and presenting research that is driven by fundamental questions and new ideas about how to make progress understanding them. The former seems more appropriate for a review of the history of a particular scientific endeavor, and the latter for a conference presentation on new research results.

If you think it is important to place your work in its historical context (relative to other research on that topic) and/or if you really want to distinguish your own work from those of others and/or settle scores, you may well be able to do this in a more effective way if you focus on the questions, ideas, and results, giving due credit (or criticism) in a way that does not dominate the substance of the presentation.

Of course, if your presentation is titled "I Am Right and Everyone Else is Wrong About Z", then go ahead and make it personal. You could even (as was done in a recent talk) include photos of the people who (unlike you) got it wrong. Maybe, if you are feeling like being very dramatic, you could have a big red X appear across the faces of those who (unlike you) have stumbled in their research endeavors.

I am certainly not implying that research is the work of faceless, nameless people whose identities are inconsequential to the progress of Science. If, however, you only have 10-20 minutes to present the latest results of your exciting work to a general audience that consists mostly of people who are not personally invested in the research itself, I bet many in the audience will want to hear your recent results and ideas and not see a presentation dominated by a graphic display of intra-research group animosity and/or boasting.

Or am I being boring and cranky/middle-aged, somehow not appreciating that research is a Sport and conferences are tournaments of some sort?