Or you could just do what I do when I’m confronted with a question I can’t answer. I just say, “That certainly bears further investigation. Unfortunately, it’s beyond the scope of my research.”
(I stole that from "Piled Higher and Deeper, an excellent webcomic about life in grad school.)
I always keep a few tidbits of information out of the presentation and when someone asks a question I can’t answer I just pull out one of those tidbits that could possibly mistaken for an answer to the question, if they persist then just ask them to talk to you afterwards. It’ll work at least once but if you have a smart crowd, you can’t do it a second time.
Can’t you just make reservations for her birthday?
Which is worse: that the insights this thread gives on what happens when the great minds of science come together reveal only that everyone involved is completely full of shit, or that I find that same revelation somehow reassuring?
Not at all completely full of shit, just that modern molecular biology is pumping out information and cellular and gene regulation mechanisms at a absolutley astounding rate that no sane person could possibly keep up with. That science is becoming too narrow, I’ll buy.
Your (hypothetical!) situation reminds me why it’s grand to be a social scientist. I swear, half of our conference talks start with the sentences, “I know you’re expecting to hear about [something relevant to the session], but things have changed since I submitted that abstract. Instead, I’m going to talk about [something entirely different].”
I don’t suppose you can pretend to be a social scientist for the duration of the conference?
Well, that wasn’t so bad. Maybe excessive caffeine boosts the anxiety levels into the paranoiac zone, I don’t know. The questions weren’t too softball, but I got through it, and had some nice discussions afterwards. Learned a lot, too. Didn’t get drunk, I’m afraid. Two beers, and all I wanted to do was sleep. Which I did.
I kind of take exception to the notion that the “great minds of science” (a catagory in which I wouldn’t really presume to include myself) are “full of shit”. All one could reasonably conclude from this is my knowledge level is not so broad and deep that I could feel confident about preparing to answer serious questions relating to a very particular field in which I’ve not done much work myself. It certainly wouldn’t hurt me to read more about what my coworkers do, but clearly, I was being a bit irrational. I don’t give as many talks as my academic peers, though, and I’ve never given someone else’s talk, so, this being a first, I was very nervous, and feeling rather put-out by the short notice.
But, boss was right, as usual (the bastard). It was a good “opportunity”.
The wife liked her party, too. I am now going home early and taking a nap.
References to the work undertaken by “colleagues” who happen to share the same names as TV and Film characters can be helpful, too:
“I’m not personally familiar with (field), but I understand that Philip Fry of the Futurama Institute has been working quite diligently in that are for some time…”
Giving pop culture-esque to otherwise scientific stuff can also be distracting.
“This particular cell goes through some amazing changes over the course of a 24 hour period, something we like to call ‘The Jack Bauer Effect’”…
Failing that, put a pair of underpants on your head, stick two pencils up your nose, and say “Wibble” to anyone who tries to engage you in conversation or discussion…
You were golden. The best position a person can be in regarding questions at a presentation is when you are giving someone else’s talk. It’s obvious you’re not the first author - possibly you’re not an author at all.
Someone asks you something you don’t know, you just say: As you know, First Author was unfortunately unable to be here with us today. You question sounds very interesting, however I personally was not sufficiently involved in that aspect of the work to feel that I could give you a complete answer. Next?
You talked long enough that it didn’t sound like you said “duh” but you didn’t say anything. It’s great!
No. I never give presentations. Or listen to them …
Well, the thing is, sort of along the lines of a statement above, although the field truly is perhaps excessively hyperspecialized, there are very few people who would be willing to say their area of expertise is unimportant, unworthy of interest or another investigator’s time to at least read a review. I had a fear that if I went up there and simply recited someone else’s work and read off their slides, deflecting their questions with an excuse, well, what does that tell my audience? I can’t be bothered with your little phosphorylated threonine residue or whatever. I didn’t want to do that. And I didn’t. I got asked a couple pretty hardball questions, as it turned out (at least, they felt that way), and I was able to at least get a nod and a thanks. Sucked like hell to get myself to that point, and probably I could have just plead ignorance and been forgiven, but somehow I was afraid I’d both mildly insult those I was presenting too and come off as an unconcerned doofus. To be honest, prior to getting the order, I really didn’t much care to delve to deeply into that subject, and felt royally inconvenienced. But, I must admit, it did me good. I get complacent in my job sometimes, don’t read enough, get fixated on small concerns of an assay right in front of me or other such narrow matters. Can’t let that happen. I stop learning, I stop being useful in the job I’m asked to do.
The conference I’m involved with has a format requiring a title, purpose, outline and summary slides. My goal someday is to give a talk using only those slides.
At a workshop once I ended my talk with a fairy tale - a variant of the Shoemaker and the Elves. The best part was that my session chair was someone I used to work with, and when he started bugging me about the time, I said I had only one more slide. True - but telling the story took five minutes.
You can get away with a lot when you’re on the Steering Committee.