Comments on: Top five annoying questions at scientific meetings

By: Iddo

Iddo — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:10:18 +0000

@chris Now I am very, very curious...

By: chris

chris — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:00:07 +0000

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.

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:12:38 +0000

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”.

By: Paul Gardner

Paul Gardner — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:28:39 +0000

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.