Moshe, yes, I certainly agree with you in that context — if the speaker is saying something “incorrect” that they are already aware of, and are willing to look past the purported incorrectness, there is little point in raising a stink about it.

There’s also the poor audience to consider. I don’t think “raising a stink” is good, but if there are people in the audience who might not know the speaker may be doing something wrong, they deserve to be told. Quickly, efficiently, and gently.

Back on the 10th of October 2006, I took Jim Kakalios to task in my blog for a simple mathematical error in chapter one of his popular science book “The Physics of Superheroes”. An error on which he bases his argument for all subsequent chapters. He acknowledged the error in an email and agreed to put it in his (online) errata sheet.
See http://www.savory.de/blog_oct_06.htm#20061029.

But never did so.

Now what does one do when the textbook is wrong and the author refuses to correct the error? Name-and-Shame doesn’t appear to be working…

One thing that makes me proud to be a physicist is that even the leaders of the field occasionally say “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.” There is an understanding that no one knows everything, and that lack of understanding is about as likely to be caused by distracted attention, limited background, poor presentation, or incorrect conclusions. Of course, when a leader of the field says “I don’t understand,” there is a much stronger insinuation that the lack of understanding is due to the ideas being incoherent. But I think this is because, in the end, when a leader of field doesn’t understand something, this is the reason why.

My graduate advisor once found it amusing to speculate how much of the high-energy physics literature would survive if it were purged every time a paper was learned to be in some way “wrong.” Some of the most prized work in physics would now be seen to contain comments or arguments that are misguided or naive. The important thing is to be “wrong” in the “right” way: good work builds upon solid intuition from analogy and is otherwise insightful enough to survive aspects of speculative details. If a person’s work is routinely “wrong” in the “wrong” ways, then it is ultimately good for science that this person gets pushed aside in the field. Of course this is very sad for the person involved, but this is just the sad fact of life that not everyone can do anything he/she wants.

I work at a chemistry+biology institute and we get applicants for staff job/postdoc positions giving their research presenations all the time. Sometimes they are not very experienced presenters or they may have a language problem so sitting through the talk can be a mild duress – but the speaker suffers more, so it is OK.

I think it is a matter of common decency to be polite and if there is an inept part in their talk it is best to argue about it discreetly, one-on-one. They have to survive the whole interview day and if you rip them apart publically right at the beginnig, you are doing no favor to yourself or to them. Its bad enough they had unimpressive job talk, you don’t need to rub it into them in withering questions in front of the whole department.(I feel less charitable to pompous and famous people in this regard). It helps to remind to ourself what it was like interviewing for a job.

I have known a couple scientists who have great difficulty in accepting their mistakes, and it really seems to me that this does much more harm to their scientific productivity than the actual mistakes do.

Otoh if the lecturer doesn’t know what he’s talking about (all too often) or the subject is so grotesquely speculative, silence should remain golden. Its just not worth making a fool of the person or of yourself (eg everyone else knows how speculative or wrong the idea is).

The setting is important too. For instance, if you are listening to QCosmology speakers, where the entire subject is by its nature 3 or 4 steps into theory never never land, pointing that very fact out accomplishes nothing and just irratates.

But remember W. Pauli vs. C.N.Yang at IAS presentation. Was Pauli wrong or behaved wrong?

Regards, Dany.

It is the subject of Novels and poetry and art and always in nature – the tried and true Challenged – there is always a fight ! the Vanguard appears.

Both of these goals (and roles) are important, and I like grad student only sessions for exactly this purpose. It also helps remove the over-inflated sense of `grad student solidarity’ mentioned above in talks, as when it’s all grad students there’s no `them’ to embarrass one of `us’ in front of.

Our journal clubs are pretty ideal environments, I should say. The question from A Lady Scientist was actually pretty shocking to me, because I can’t imagine a journal club environment where it wasn’t TOTALLY clear that the weird, unexplainable, or just plain wrong stuff from the paper wasn’t the responsibility of the presenter! And there’s always a lot of conversation — it’s totally OK to say, as a presenter, that you don’t know the answer to the question, but if somebody else does know, they’re not going to just sit there silently since it’s “your week” — they’re going to share.

But we also have, during journal-club-offseason, a set of talks for grad students and postdocs. Partly this is to ease students, generally, into “giving talks in a friendly environment,” but I also think we’re pretty good about self-policing and being responsible rather than using the ‘easy’ audience as an excuse. I think most of us do a good job of using it as a *special* kind of opportunity. And, of course, it’s not always about giving “talks,” but a PARTICULAR talk — job talks, exam talks, important conference talks, potentially life-changing talks. Additionally, I don’t think this series decreases the number of talks students give elsewhere in the department, or decreases the amount of responsibility overall; it’s just an ‘extra’ commitment that we all make and all benefit from.

Our grads-and-postdocs only event also does a great job of helping to create and support a feeling of community. I have actually noticed that since we started having more events for grads & postdocs only, I have become much more forward about asking questions — not just at these events, but in general.

So, I think like most things in grad school, it’s a tool and an opportunity, and of course it can be misused, but I think it also serves (maybe “can serve”?) some specific purposes.