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Comment by lokar | Hacker News Reader

I think you have to start from:

- the organizers are doing what they think is best for the attendees, and what the majority of attendees want

And, you should consider: "what if everyone did that?"

I gather they had a paper they thought was important, but was not accepted to the conference (so they had no formal chance to present it). What would happen if everyone who's paper was rejected could just wander around passing it out and pitching it to random passerby's? I think almost everyone who attends conferences would not want that.

I wonder what other options they considered. Did the conference have a less formal forum, like workshops or something? Could the topic be discussed there? A poster session?

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> you should consider: "what if everyone did that?"

Literally every academic conference.

> but was not accepted to the conference (so they had no formal chance to present it)

One, source for it not being accepted to the conference? It was accepted to the conference organizer’s journal.

Two, again, literally every academic conference. Folks handing out their papers, including preprints not published at the organizer’s journal, is ridiculously common.

> Could the topic be discussed there?

Again, literally just handing out their article.

The last CS conf I went to (admittedly, a while ago), I did not run into people passing out papers unprompted. Is that what you mean? Just going up to people you don't know and handing it to them? Or, giving it to people you know, or are already talking to? I'm not sure I understand the situation.

> Just going up to people you don't know and handing it to them?

Standing in a hallway handing them out and discussing? I’ve seen it at aerospace conferences aplenty.

> giving it to people you know, or are already talking to?

This, too.

Another thought:

There could be some people who are afraid to be seen as involved in criticism of the administration, either for themselves or students/staff in the lab, for immigration or funding reasons. Not sure how relevant this is or how aggressive the approaches are. It would be helpful to hear from a neutral eyewitness.

> It would be helpful to hear from a neutral eyewitness

Agree. In the meantime, I’m glad their article is seeing daylight. I would have edited it a bit more neutrally. But the shenanigans it calls out are damaging to diabetic care and research and almost certainly illegal.

They were not handing an Article, they were handing an opinion piece titled :Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now!

If they wanted to be political in a scientific conference, they could have done so by handing the opinion piece outside the venue at the entrance. Whoever wanted to get into their politics could do it, and whoever wanted to be left alone and be there for the science could do it as well.

It's extremely disrespectful to be pressuring the other people in the conference with their ideology.

> They were not handing an Article, they were handing an opinion piece

They were handing out an editorial published in the flagship journal of the ADA. This is incredibly normal. It's increasingly abundantly clear that the conference organisers broke their own code of conduct and then later sent CYA e-mails.

I've been going to scientific conferences about more than 20 years now. I never, ever, saw anyone distributing scientific articles unrequested (most authors will gladly provide them on request, but surely not hand them out unrequested), much less anyone carrying around copies of opinion pieces to distribute unrequested.

Never. And that's the norm in a scientific conference.

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