For some reason the section relating to scientific communication at conferences has had a distinctly Chinese flavour…. Poster sessions are the ultimate manifestations of science as an open institution – rarely refereed and only lightly controlled, they have become the researchers’ equivalent of Beijing’s Democracy wall. But because they aren’t refereed, posters don’t really count.”…

It is believed to be necessary to combat the limitations of what Germans call fachidiots (‘subject fools’), those who know a great deal about their own discipline but nothing much about anything else, and who can distort decision-making with their narrow analyses. (Sillitoe, 2004, p. 6) Germans as always brilliant at coming up with descriptive…