François CholletVerified account

The chair likely didn't know the presenter at all (given they didn't even meet them beforehand!?!) so even a brief interruption could derail a novice speaker, let alone when the interruption undermines them and their work. Most people feel naked on stage at the best of times...

Seriously, I think this story is on my top 5 worst academic nightmares. WTF is wrong with people?

I want to hear about the other four

I'm not sure you really do: most of them involve diarrhea and Marc Johnson interrupting my talk to ask "Can you please speak English?"

the session chair (who was one of my former professors) asking out loud "if that talk was about my thesis work ? Yes ? So you wouldn't mind if I don't listen then." and then she started reading papers. Not cool.

That was at the Paris 7's Department of Linguistics. They were known to make people cry at their seminars, seriously. At some points two prominent French linguists started to yell at each other because one of them just told the speaker "What a bunch of craps. Aren't you ashamed?"

So, getting back to my talk which ended up miserably with me showing, instead of my carefully set up slides, pages of my thesis with derivation proofs and all (I was told it would be a linguists audience, so I didn't include anything formal) ..