Any conference report that includes “but the mere public showing of his erection from the podium was not sufficient” is worth an extended read. The presenter–one Professor Brindley–was experimenting with cures for erectile dysfunction. His strategy involved the wince-inducing method of direct penile injection. He was not content with merely showing slides:
He paused, and seemed to ponder his next move. The sense of drama in the room was palpable. He then said, with gravity, ‘I’d like to give some of the audience the opportunity to confirm the degree of tumescence’. With his pants at his knees, he waddled down the stairs, approaching (to their horror) the urologists and their partners in the front row. As he approached them, erection waggling before him, four or five of the women in the front rows threw their arms up in the air, seemingly in unison, and screamed loudly. The scientific merits of the presentation had been overwhelmed, for them, by the novel and unusual mode of demonstrating the results.
Suddenly, Powerpoint doesn’t seem that bad.
17 comments
January 18, 2012 at 1:17 pm
ari
Take note: this is a very serious scholarly blog.
January 18, 2012 at 1:27 pm
silbey
Very serious.
January 18, 2012 at 1:28 pm
ari
No, it’s not that serious.
January 18, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Western Dave
Surely you could have found a better title for the post? Or was everything you came up with too crude/obvious to be worth it.
January 18, 2012 at 1:39 pm
silbey
Too crude.
January 18, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Dave
From where I’m sitting, I’m thinking conferences where this doesn’t happen are definitely the right ones…
January 18, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Western Dave
The best I could come up with was “How Not to Inject Life into Your Presentations”
January 18, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Jonathan Dresner
I think more presentations should involve self-experimentation.
January 18, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Ralph Luker
Isn’t an erection a powerpoint?
January 18, 2012 at 2:36 pm
silbey
And there’s the title.
January 18, 2012 at 3:37 pm
mrearl
I once had a couple of clients who ran a small-to-medium steel construction/assembly operation. Their business cards bore the following slogan: “Guaranteed: The best erection you’ve ever had.”
January 18, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Tybalt
Too few journal articles incorporate the word “waggling”.
January 18, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Colin Danby
According to the writeup this was a publishable result.
January 19, 2012 at 3:42 am
ajay
If you look up “erection” in the London Yellow Pages you’ll find it between “escort agencies” and “earth moving”.
January 19, 2012 at 6:15 am
silbey
and “earth moving”.
The British always were overconfident.
January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
Dave
I did think we had a better grasp of alphabetical order, though.
January 19, 2012 at 10:18 am
Aardvark Cheeselog
But mightn’t it be worth it, to get 466 cites for two publications?