Paul Novosad@paulnovosad
Econ seminar culture is built on the assumption that the audience knows something that the speaker doesn't, and that the speaker values that information.
A very important thing the audience knows and the speaker doesn't: Is the speaker making any sense at all?
If nobody has any idea what you are saying, it's very helpful to be interrupted on slide 3. If you leave confusion for too long, you will lose your audience entirely.
To publish a paper / nail a presentation, you need to nail the elevator pitch perfectly. In a paper, this is the introduction, in a presentation it's the preview. If you get 50 questions in your paper preview, it's often a signal that you have work to do. It's a sign you're at risk of losing the reader in your introduction, it's not good.
If someone asks "are you going to address endogeneity?" Don't roll your eyes because it's coming on slide 12. The feedback is: "It's very hard to interpret the things you are saying without clarity on how you are thinking about endogeneity."
It's normal that junior presenters should face more questions. They have less presenting experience and the audience knows more relative to them as compared with a senior talk. (Though often juniors have better presenting skills)
After a presentation where I get bogged down at the beginning, I ask myself what were the key stumbling points, how can I make things tighter the next time.
Of course, the audience also has a responsibility to keep their interruptions value-adding. A good audience member assesses whether their interruption will add to the whole group's understanding more than remaining silent.
Some audience members are bad at this and waste others' time, and seminar organizers need strategies to prevent these people from being destructive. But in most econ seminar settings, policies that reduce interruptions on average (without discriminating low- vs. high-quality interruptions) are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Questions and interruptions are good. They keep everyone engaged and on their toes. They result in better understanding for everyone. The good econ seminars are the best seminars in the social sciences, and the good overwhelmingly outnumber the bad.
