We all know that one of the few perks of being a scientist is flying off to local or international meetings every year. Once there, we give a 10-15 minute presentation on what we’ve supposedly discovered or made progress on. And when pressed, we claim the meetings are critical to network with other scientists. But in reality we all know it’s a bit of a scam to do some travelling and find out who’s doing what. To put things bluntly, in many cases, it’s science tourism.

Disagree? Well let’s look at the format of typical international meetings: First you give a 10 minute talk with 5 minutes for questions. But more often than not you fill up the entire slot talking, and there’s no time for questions (or Dr. Dufus before you went over time). Then, rather than networking with the interested, you rush off to one of the 50 concurrent sessions and, if you’re lucky, find time at the end to wander around the posters and chat with students standing before them. For the next 3 days this is all you do. Before you know it, the conference is over and you get a tourist-weekend before flying back on Monday.

If this sounds familiar then you'll admit that there must be a better way for the 8 million scientists in the world to update us on their progress. First, think of the annual 16 million flights if all of us attended a meeting for a mere 15 minute talk. The carbon footprint is crazy. To quote Greta Thunberg “...this ongoing irresponsible behavior will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.” She’s right! You can’t preach about global warming while hypocritically flying around pumping out greenhouses gases, can you?

Then what about the cost of all those flights, not to mention the exorbitant registration fees and luxury hotel bills. Can we afford such waste in Mexico, or in any country where taxpayers foot the bill? Of course not. And when the credibility goes for having done it, can we really blame politicians for cutting the budget?

So what are the solutions, how can we be the change? Well, first we have to eliminate meetings where we have so little contribution. It’s more efficient to post a 15 minute video on YouTube—more people will see it than in any conference. Second we have to split-up these big meetings into smaller consecutive ones where there are no concurrent talks and we can concentrate on discussing our results and learning from our peers, face-to-face. This will build more collaboration than could any 15 minute talk. And we need to think more seriously about virtual meetings or other options.

Pretending we can carry on business-as-usual, flying thousands of kms for 15 minutes, is asking for trouble, not only from our governments and citizenry but also from our kids.

Paul Blanchon. 23 Sept. 2019.