Expertise in the field – science education, and synthetic biology? Senior academics and conference scams.
It is considered an honour to be invited as a plenary speaker at a major international conferences – and an indicator of recognition as an expert in a field.
So it seems odd when one is invited to be a plenary speaker at a conference in a field that one has never worked in and so has no published work.
On 02/11/2015 17:21, Syntheticbiology 2016 wrote:
Honorable Invitation from Synthetic Biology 2016 at London UK
Dear Dr. Keith S. Taber,
Basing on your expertise in the related field, we are pleasured to welcome your eminent Plenary Speaker at the upcoming 2nd International Conference on Synthetic Biology 2016 London UK, which is going to be held during August 18-20, 2016 London UK.
Synthetic Biology 2016, a three day event consisting of a scientific program, workshops, symposiums, comprehensive talks, special sessions, oral and poster presentations of peer-reviewed contributed papers and exciting and innovative research products which can be exhibited for further development of Synthetic Biology.
Synthetic Biology research area interconnects Systems Biology, Computational Biology, Nano biotechnology, Biophysics, Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Biology, Protein Engineering, Bio-Chemical Engineering and Genetic Engineering. …
[Note – science education does not get a mention here.] …
My response:
On 26/02/2016 19:51, Prof Keith S Taber wrote:
Dear Kevin
I apologise for not giving this invitation attention earlier, but for some reason it was in my SPAM folder, so I had not seen it.
I am of course honoured to be invited as a Plenary Speaker at your conference. However, your invitation did not offer any details of what this would involve. I assume you repay travel expenses for your Plenary Speakers, but do you offer free accommodation for the whole conference, or just the day of the Plenary Lecture?
Do you offer a fee to Plenary Speakers, or do you simply cover their conference fees?
I would also be keen to know how you came to choose me as potential Plenary Speaker at this conference – and which area of my research the conference organising committee were especially keen for me to speak to your delegates about.
I look forward to receiving more details relating to your kind invitation.
Best wishes
Keith
This was copied to several academics at prestigious universities who were apparently part of the organising committee that had invited me:
- Dr. Oscar Ces (OC), a Reader in Chemistry at Imperial College London
- Professor Krams who holds a Chair in Molecular Bioengineering at Imperial College, London
- Anthony Forster Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden
- Vsevolod V Gurevich, Professor at Vanderbilt University.
Not surprisingly, I did not receive a reply from ‘Kevin’ (or anyone else) who had written to invite me as a plenary speaker – not to develop the invitation, to explain it, or apologise for it being a mistake (perhaps they meant to invite that other Keith S. Taber well known for his work in synthetic biology?)
This seems another sign of the sad demise of academia as a body worthy of being respected in the public domain. I wonder how many other academics with no connection to this field were invited as plenary speakers (but presumably actually would be charged fees if they did wish to speak). I find this type of scam as annoying (although my email application seemed to know I was being spammed), as I teach research methods, and it is difficult for new researchers to sift the decent conferences from the less worthy ones, when this type of irresponsible marketing ploy is used. I tell students to look to see if conference committees include senior academic they recognise from their reading, as one indicator of conference quality. In this case, committee members from top universities was no assurance of the quality of conference processes.
I am not surprised at some conference organisers behaving in such disreputable ways – I guess to them conferences are just events to be marketed in the search for profits. What I find very sad is that top academics from such highly regarded institutions put their names to these scams*, giving them a veneer of respectability they clearly do not deserve.
Read about 'Conferences and poor academic practice'
First published 24th July 2014 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/
* This assumes, of course, that the academics named as scientific committee members have agreed to join such a committee, which I found when investigating another dubious invitation is not always the case! ⚗︎
