Is science boring?
Hi there, dear reader. Sorry I haven’t updated the blog lately, but I’ve been lazy and haven’t really had anything to say.
However, I’ve just had a chat with some guys about this and, slightly drunk as I am on a Saturday evening, I feel like venting some steam.
I’ve attended some talks this week that I found extremely boring.
Why? Does science have to be boring?
Fuck no! It is very exciting, but lately I find that reading papers is a lot more interesting than attending talks. Talks are a complete waste of time.
Why is that? I really don’t undestand it.
If you have something exciting to say, why turn it into an academic boring lecture where all the emotions have been completly removed? Are you afraid of offending anyone? Why? If your science is good, then why be afraid?
Talks are supposed to get me interested in the topic. The effect they have is getting me to sleep.
I would love to start a movement against this. If you don’t like the talk, then leave, noisily. Teach those fuckers that you they should prepare a talk, before they open their mouth.
Damn it!
November 15th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Hi Mailund,
I completely agree with you. I think that people in science try to keep things as dispassionate as possible to avoid personal attacks.
If you show that you are somehow attached emotionally to your results, people will simply start “bashing” you, so science speakers tend to always be on the defensive, and try to express their ideas with the least amount of emphasis possible — which turns any lecture into a drag. Plus, there is always someone in your audience who is waiting for the “gotcha” moment to get people’s attention, and most science speakers seem to hate presenting stuff in public anyway.
Put all of that together, and you get one boring talk.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Hi Mailund, Hugo from Portugal here;
You know, some people just aren’t cut for public presentations. I’m a fan of the american way of almost tv-shopping style scientific presentations. We’ve had some the past year at the IGC, where we were “encouraged” to attend, being internal students, bi-weekly seminars by both in-house and external speakers. The most of them, though, were simply lousy. Either their english was terrible, their voice had the same effect as a big glass of warm milk and a flask of xanax, the presentation itself was cluttered with gibberish or a combination of the above.
Sure, people can train, work hard on their skills, but there are lost causes. Lots of them. Honestly, during the year, 5 out of 6 presentations I attended were also a chore where I chose to a) sleep a bit at the back of the room, where it’s dark and comfy; b) leave early for lunch; c) scribble some personal interpretations of the speaker’s physical appearance and overall mannerisms. I’d say, that science itself isn’t boring, but can be percieved or presented as boring way too often…
No wonder that our director even had to write (hilarious) motivational e-mails for people to come to the seminars every once in a while!
Cheers and hope to see you around next year!
HM
December 16th, 2008 at 12:36 am
(I am not a professor – of course not, I am just a phd student!!)
Well, I would try to motivate students by making them understand which classes of problems they can solve with bioinformatics.
For example, you can start with a big slide of the human genome project, and tell them: what would you do with all these sequences?
Then, you must explain them the basis of software testing. Make them understand very clearly that bioinformatics is not different from an experimental science: you have to make your analysis reproducible and you have to prove your hypothesis.
Only then you can show some example of in silico experiment and start teaching them the basis of programming.
Well, this is what I think. I don’t have experience in teaching, but I have a lot of experience in being a student in a bioinformatics class!! :)