I assume that frequent readers of nodalpoint have given talks at scientific meetings (otherwise known as conferences), in which case this excellent post entitled A field guide to biomedical meeting creatures, part 1: Any questions? will be familiar:
In any case, in observing a number of talks and in giving my own, it occurred to me that a little-appreciated art is that of dealing with people who will inevitably ask questions after you're done with your talk. It's a tough thing, as the people who come up to the microphone to ask questions sometimes have agendas that aren't always immediately apparent, agendas that often don't include simple curiosity about your results.
Respectful Insolence (a.k.a. "Orac Knows") then goes on to categorise the questioners. My favourite is the last one, "Oh Shit!":
Oh Shit! will ask a question that unerringly and devastatingly reveals a huge flaw in your experimental or clinical trial methodology (often this flaw is that you forgot what should have been a very obvious control in your experiment or a very obvious control group in your clinical trial), a huge deficiency in your data or statistical analysis, or a gaping hole in your argument. Worse, it's usually a huge flaw that you never thought of or thought you had papered over successfully.
Question is: did they miss any ? For example the dilettante...
Comments
More questions than answers
Nice articles. The audience at most of the talks that I attend often consists of people who don't really seem to be listening/comprehending, but feel compelled to ask something, anything at the end. "Maybe you mentioned this and I just missed it, but..." is a common opening line.
That probably says more about my workplace than anything else.
The audience at most of the t
You are not the only one !! The toughest job is the moderator/chair of the session, afterall, they have to ask a couple of usually silly questions to get the ball rolling !!
During my PhD years, our institute director would often sleep off in the front row, but would be the first person to ask a question once the claps had woken him up. His trick was quite simple and effective. He would start by 'that graph which you showed a while ago...' whereby the speaker would rapidly scroll through the slides to the first graph/plot. At this point, the question would be something like 'Have you been able to repeat this to the same degree of accuracy in all your experiments ?'. This would make the speaker go into long explanations of the technique etc.
In a nutshell, there should be a separate category for this, although I cannot come up with a name....
nappers
"Maybe you mentioned this and I just missed it, but..."
In my experience, this is code for "I think this is a pertinent question, but you may have addressed it while I was napping". Whereupon you have to restrain yourself from pointing out that you devoted 2 slides to the damned subject.