And a voice in the wilderness was heard calling out upon the racing wind: our Psychology conference offers publication and an unformed fear!
Keith S. Taber
This week's* most bizarre invitation is to submit a proposal to a Psychology conference:
"The aim objective of CPSY 2016 is to provide a platform for researchers, engineers, academicians as well as industrial professionals from all over the world to present their research results and development activities in Psychology. Submitted conference papers will be reviewed by technical committees of the Conference."
Well that all sounds pretty standard. But then the next paragraph begins:
"Before her eyes as she gazed a smooth plain of snow spread out in the distance. The wind, carrying white, shaggy masses, raced over the plain, piping cold, shrill whistles."
I'm not sure they are really selling the location (in Shanghai, China) as an ideal place for a conference. The paragraph continued….
"Across the snowy expanse moved a girl's figure, dark and solitary, rocking to and fro. The wind fluttered her dress, clogged her footsteps, and drove pricking snowflakes into her face. Walking was difficult; the little feet sank into the snow. Cold and fearful the girl bent forward, like a blade of grass, the sport of the wanton wind. To the right of her on the marsh stood the dark wall of the forest; the bare birches and aspens quivered and rustled with a mournful cry. Yonder in the distance, before her, the lights of the city glimmered dimly."
- Perhaps the airport is some way outside the City?
- Perhaps the lights 'glimmered dimly' due to air pollution – I've supervised a student from China who told me it can get pretty bad there.
The next paragraph tells me that the conference proceedings will be published by "by DEStech Publications" and will be indexed, for example in Google Scholar. Then I am told:
"'Lord in heaven, have mercy!' the mother muttered again, shuddering with the cold and horror of an unformed fear."
It seems papers are invited in areas including educational psychology and the psychology of learning, so although I am not a psychologist, I can see there might be presentations of interest. But it does sound a bit chilly there, and I think I probably already have enough unformed fears without travelling half way around the world to develop some more.
- Perhaps they just wanted to get my attention.
- Perhaps it's an experiment with different recipients randomly split into groups getting different messages in their invitations, to see if there is differential uptake?
- Perhaps the person who prepared the copy did not have the high level of English skills they claimed when they applied for the job?
- Or they had just learnt to 'cut and paste'?
- Or perhaps this was prepared on someone's last day in post, and they had not enjoyed their employment there?
If anyone reading this is going to the '2016 International Conference on Psychology' next June, perhaps you'd be kind enough to drop me a line if you find out what that was all about!
Read about 'Conferences and poor academic practice'
* First published 9th September 2015 (at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/) – but I'd still be interested to hear from anyone who went to the conference!
