My First Research Conference: A Funny Story

I have a PhD in psychometrics (psychological measurement). Way back when I started graduate school (1991, I think) I attended my first research conference, a meeting of the American Psychometric Society. I looked at the schedule, picked out talks to attend, and was looking forward to learned discourse and hoping I would understand what I heard.

The very first talk I attended was given by an elderly man, who was quite famous in his field. He gave what I thought seemed like a nice talk. Then, an audience member, another elderly man, got up and started lacing into the guy! I don't remember his exact words (it was long ago) but they were along the lines of

"Why do they let you speak at these conferences?"

and "You know NOTHING about this subject! Everything you said is wrong!"

and more like that.

"Wow!" I thought to myself "this is a rough crowd!"

But it turns out these two were great friends, had known each other for decades, and completely disagreed on a lot of topics in the field. The next talk was given by a grad student, and everyone was polite to her, with comment like

"Very good talk. Have you thought of XXXX?" and so on.