Science Doesn't Care Who You Are

A few months ago I sat in the audience for a PhD student’s talk that was, well, not great. The student was clear and articulate. They were prepared. The talk was not great because the ideas weren’t fully worked through, had internal inconsistencies, and failed to account for obvious alternative explanations.

Several professors in the audience shared my concerns and asked tough but respectful questions that gave the student pause. The student’s advisor probably should have pushed them harder before the talk, but in the room itself, other professors did what academia is supposed to do: they productively challenged a student to think more carefully about their work. A normal day at a university. And I’m glad to see normal days again, because for a while there, they weren’t.

In recent years, a strange norm took hold. Critical feedback from someone with more power directed at someone with less became suspect, an example of punching down. Critiquing student work was a professor’s job, sure, b…