Today's featured speaker (photo by Flickr CC user Brett Jordan)

How do you know if somebody who says he or she delivered a paper at a conference— whose paper was accepted, whose name appears in the conference schedule, who includes the item on an official c.v,–actually wrote and presented the paper?

Over the last two months, I have heard of six people who canceled their appearances at the last moment and it left me wondering: If a hiring, or tenure and promotion, committee were evaluating these individuals, how would we know they hadn’t shown up?

How would you know this person was lying?

OK, so I was going to write “misleading” rather than “lying,” but I thought that would be misleading. Let’s face it: When you don’t show up to give a paper, as far as I’m concerned you must remove the item…

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