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Most of us at one time or another must have encountered students who say something like, ¡°I haven¡¯t done any of the reading, I bet it is rubbish anyway: in my opinion¡­¡±, and then proceed to spout nonsense. We then have to think of something polite to say in response, perhaps something on the lines of: ¡°You don¡¯t seem to have got the hang of scholarly discourse. Can I suggest you read X? Then let¡¯s have a conversation.¡±

In ¡°Signal and noise in the lecture theatre¡± (Letters, 5 December), a response to my piece on the evidence about lecturing (¡°The chalk and talk conundrum¡±, 21 November), Kevin Smith writes that lectures do indeed provide ¡°essential functions¡±. How does he know? Is he applying the same burden of proof here as he would in his own discipline?

This is a phenomenon I have encountered throughout my career. It is as if academics have a ¡°disciplinary¡± cortex in which they are well informed, rational, rigorous and careful, while in their ¡°teaching¡± cortex they emote strident opinions. And the corpus callosum has been severed, so they are unable to spot the difference.

Graham Gibbs
Winchester