Really now?
If one had doubts about conferences and junkets, one can imagine asking a random doctor or academic whether conferences really were all that great, and the answer my imagination spits out is that they would probably say 'yes, conferences are great! I learned about X, Y, and Z there, it was totally useful'. And one would not put much weight on it because of the obvious conflict of interest and because they could easily have heard of X Y and Z a week later when they ran into an article or a colleague brought it up or a relevant paper surfaced in their email alerts or he could have cold-emailed in the first place, and it's not clear to the disinterested outsider that conferences really are worth the money - you already know that the insiders will say it's worthwhile because how else are they going to get the money and grants, and why would they be operating or attending if they didn't think so?
So what have we learned by this exercise of asking an academic with the name CellBioGuy and him saying 'yes, conferences are great! I learned about microbiological things X, Y, and Z there, it was totally useful', exactly?
(But hey, at least this means it's easy to investigate all biases and methods: just ask someone involved... 'Hey, psychiatrist consulting for big pharmacorp: are you sure it's OK to be taking thousands of dollars in consulting fees and junkets from them?' 'Absolutely! Thanks to the consulting, I keep up with all the cutting-edge techniques and new drugs which has revolutionized my research, and it's much easier to get access to private datasets!' 'Thanks! It's important to hear from people who, you know, actually consult for big pharmacorps!')
What have we learned from a random LW person opining about things (s)he likely has no experience with?
(With apologies to the OP).
See also: peer review is terrible, frequentist statistics is terrible, academic career structure is terrible, etc. etc.
And yes, it is important to actually have some first-hand experience regarding stuff you are criticizing, or at the very least ask people who do have it. See, e.g. Scott's critique of sneaky pharma practices. I would think this is obvious enough to not even need saying (but I wonder sometimes...)
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I'm asking this as a follow-up to http://lesswrong.com/lw/d5y/why_academic_papers_are_a_terrible_discussion/, which was written a few years ago, and which I find very interesting.
Many of the arguments advanced in http://lesswrong.com/lw/d5y/why_academic_papers_are_a_terrible_discussion/ (especially inaccessibility) could just as well apply to conferences, too.
I'd also wonder - would you consider conferences to also be a terrible discussion forum? What do you think would be some good alternatives?
The audience for conferences is limited, and people seem to remember only a tiny tiny fraction of everything they've encountered in a conference. The ideas in conferences don't seem to do much for building up platforms of public discussions around the new subjects that are often announced in conferences (rather than, say, on online platforms).
I suppose one could advance the argument that ideas often get brought up/discussed at conferences that wouldn't be conveniently discussed in any other medium (for now..). But is this mostly because people are too comfortable with what they're been brought up with?