Top five annoying questions at scientific meetings
5. Question: “You know, our group has been working on this for a long time, and we found that…”
Really means: “How come you got invited to talk about this and not I?”
4. Question: “Have you tried using Y instead of X?”
Really means: “We are doing the same thing using Y, since we can’t afford to use X on our budget. But we haven’t had results in the past two years, and you totally scooped us. Is there any way we can actually get results using Y?”
3. Question: “So where do you think this work is going?”
Really means: “I was just scratching my head, and the microphone runner thought I was raising my hand and handed me the mike. Now that I actually have the mike, I might as well ask something”.
2. Question: “You know, I was just talking about this recently with Bigshot1 and Bigshot2, and they said that…”
Really means: “Hey, look at me! I’m important enough to have engaged both Bigshot1 and Bigshot2 together in a conference. (They couldn’t get away because it was the conference dinner with free booze).”
1. Question: “It seems that this whole field of…. is filled with very exciting prospects. We have been looking into…. and Bigshot3 has recently published in Science….(3-4 minutes more in the same vein) so my question is: what are your thoughts?”
Really means: “Muahahaha. By hijacking Q&A time, I got to present at this conference even though I was not invited to. Sucks to the Program Committee”
Attendees at the CXXXVII Symposium on Whatever
Very nice. I’ve had a “What was that all about again?” before. It definitely irritated the hell out of me.
Really means: I wasn’t listening to your talk but just realised you may have talked about something interesting.
So funny – here is my lame attempt:
Question: “Have you ever tried XXX with YYY over the ABC in the XYZ? (unbelievably ridiculous experiment that would take 20 years, 80 employees and 50 million dollars)?”
Really means: “Look, how I can come up with these amazingly complicated ideas about someone else’s work that they have not even tried”.
There was a regular attendee at a major genomics meeting in the mid-00’s who was a particularly annoying exponent of Q1. His schtick never varied: “I have two questions: [long, tenuously connected ramble 1], random question 1; [long, tenuously connected ramble 2], random question 2”. He became something of a joke: people would rub their hands in anticipation whenever his rather accented voice began with “I have 2 questions”. Still, he got noticed and eventually got a job out of it.
@chris
Now I am very, very curious…