I once saw a research talk at MIT, where the visiting professor ended up in tears. I've also seen a couple of talks, where a question at the end was phrased so "softly", that if you weren't already close to seeing the fatal flaw in the work, you might miss that it was pointed out. I've wondered what the right thing is. Kind to the person, but unsparing with the ideas, seems... hard to execute here. The person being so invested in their ideas.
And yet, I once saw someone doing a community outreach road trip. Maybe from NSF, for Next Generation Science Standards. She was awesome. As in, I sat there in the audience, and was awed. Some of the questions asked were emotional, and angry, and too confused to even be wrong. Where I would boggle, and could think of little more than "okayyyyyy... moving on". And yet she fielded them with empathy, respect, and grace, extracting value for both the questioner and the audience. I've long wished I'd tagged the event, so I could find and ask her, how does one train to do that? I still don't know, but I was left with a new presumption, that no question is so broken, that a sufficiently skilled respondent cannot address it with productive kindness.
And yet, I once saw someone doing a community outreach road trip. Maybe from NSF, for Next Generation Science Standards. She was awesome. As in, I sat there in the audience, and was awed. Some of the questions asked were emotional, and angry, and too confused to even be wrong. Where I would boggle, and could think of little more than "okayyyyyy... moving on". And yet she fielded them with empathy, respect, and grace, extracting value for both the questioner and the audience. I've long wished I'd tagged the event, so I could find and ask her, how does one train to do that? I still don't know, but I was left with a new presumption, that no question is so broken, that a sufficiently skilled respondent cannot address it with productive kindness.