Press conferences

This is what happens. A bunch of journos sit in a big room with their laptops, their mobile phones and the all important data cables. Then a press officer shepherds them all into a lecture theatre where a scientist speaks to them for 5 minutes about their research, followed by 25 minutes for questions. Sometimes there is no real story, other times there is a great story but it doesn’t become clear until the last 5 minutes when the scientist lets slip about a teeny little thing they did last year but is actually a lot more interesting than any of the other things they have mentioned so far. Then the journos huddle up and swap notes on what was and wasn’t said and what the story might be. They grab coffee and return to the big room with the laptops. Then a press officer shepherds them all into a lecture theatre....


I took this photo through the blinds because I was too embarrassed to ask all those people for permission to take their photo.  I hope it give an impression, if not detail.

This happens five or six times a day. Well, actually only five or six times a morning. Because you can only catch a journo’s attention before about 2pm. After that they’re writing on a deadline and they are grumpy. Before that they are full of banter and gags and competitions re how many copies everybody’s latest book has sold and how many times they have each been slagged off by Ben Goldacre.

Then everybody files by about 6pm and they slouch off to the pub.

Really they’re a great bunch. Lively, curious, funny. Better at critical appraisal than most undergraduates and able to do it in a flash without ever having to actually read the research paper in question.

Through the afternoon the room is quiet, punctuated only by the guy from the Mirror asking if anyone can think of a single syllable word for protein.

Yesterday one of the press conferences was on something to do with turbulence. This is as much as I can tell you because, despite 30 minutes of intensive questions, I never got any further than it was something to do with turbulence. Eventually the lady from the Daily Mail asked if it would be possible for Dr Turbulence to just explain the key finding of his work. By the time he got to the stage of saying “Look at this jug of water, it wouldn’t be particularly interesting to observe for a prolonged period of time...” the soft giggles of the man from the Financial Times had deteriorated into loud guffaws. The room erupted. The journos stopped trying. There was no story.