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On the Value of an Open Discussion I
participated this summer in a meeting of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in Liverpool (U.K.) on the topic of nanoparticle assemblies. The meeting, organized by David Schiffrin of the University of Liverpool, was called a Faraday Discussion. The purpose of the Faraday Meetings is to provide an “international forum for the exchange of views and newly acquired results,” and their proceedings are published in the RSC journal Faraday Discussions. The format of a Faraday Discussion is uncommon; authors submit papers in advance of the meeting, and the papers are distributed to attendees. At the meeting, authors have about five minutes to summarize their papers, after which is a very generous period for questions from the attendees. The questions and the authors’ responses become part of the published proceedings. The meeting is therefore strongly oriented to discussion of the author’s report. The author may (and usually does) offer some extension and clarification of the submitted paper. I am at this moment doing that for my own paper. This was the second Faraday Discussion that I have attended. I found it exceptionally stimulating and came away with numerous ideas and cleared vision. In the Faraday Discussion, the approach is that discussion of the paper is made very public. There is another style of discussion-oriented meeting, held predominantly in the United States, namely the Gordon Research Conferences (GRCs). These conferences—which cover a wide range of topics in chemistry—allow a generous amount of time for discussion (but much more for the presentation, as there is no associated submitted written paper). The GRC rule is that discussions (questions and answers) are “off the record” and cannot be
publicly cited. I have been to many GRCs and have witnessed a lot of discussion. I could not help but ponder the basic difference between the GRC and Faraday meeting formats. The GRC’s aim is to encourage presentation of new and fresh and perhaps preliminary ideas and results and to stimulate discussion about them that can be candid because nothing will be cited later. The Faraday Discussion makes a point of seeing that discussion is dominant and that it is recorded. If I compare the freshness of the results at the Faraday meeting and remember the lack of inhibition and exchange of innovative ideas in the discussion, I see little if any difference between the depth and informativeness of the two styles of meeting. The Faraday Discussion has the further advantage of publishing the discussion comments so that people not present at the meeting can gain something from them. I come away from these thoughts with the impression that the GRC rule on lack of citation is much less of a benefit to science than is advertised. Lastly, I took the occasion of preparing this editorial to look through some books about Michael Faraday that I have on my shelf. Faraday wrote extensively on the art and practice of lecturing. One of his remarks was that “listeners expect reason and sense, whilst gazers only require a succession of words.” The attendees at a meeting count as much as the lecturer for a good exchange of ideas, and both count for more than the format of the meeting itself.
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