Anyone else out there getting a ridiculous amount of conference SPAM recently relating to conferences in China? I keep getting invited to speak at or chair sessions at various meetings of little relevance to what I do. For example, consider a recent email I got that starts with
Dear Dr. Jonathan A. Eisen,You are cordially invited, on behalf of the organizing commission, to Chair a Session or give a Keynote Speech at Session 9-3: Protein Biomaterial Design and Applications of BIT’s 4th Annual Protein and Peptide Conference (PepCon-2011). The theme of this upcoming conference is “New Leaders in Protein and Peptide Science”. The conference will be held at China National Convention Center, Beijing, China from March 23-25, 2011.
This is relating to this meeting: BIT Life Sciences’ 4th Annual PepCon-2011 which has little relevance to what I do. I have been getting many many emails like this over the last few weeks. Not sure what led to the uptick in getting these emails but they are starting to annoy me …
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Jonathan Eisen's Lab 
Yep, keep getting this too. Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to ask them to send you a first class return ticket to China?
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Me too. It's all part of the larger science spam problem. I saw a cool website recently where you could name and shame science spammers but my Google foo is failing me right now…
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I have written about this before here for example
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Definitely.
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This company, BIT, has been around. I wrote about them last year – they seemed to be involved in some kind of war with a competing conference organizing company – http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55895/.
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Yes, I agree BIT has been SPAMming me too lately. As Nick says, a reply requesting a first class airfare should be the best way to get rid of it.
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worst part about this — I have beginning students who have just presented their first conference paper, and they get this email. Their ego jumps, they come to me hoping I will send them to this conference where James Watson will supposedly be present in an exotic location.
And then I say that it's junk, and it shatters their world.
*sigh* make it stop!
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@Nick. Thats exactly what I did after three months of spams with annoying regularity-asked them to sponsor my whole trip, including the stay! Didnt get mails after that. Immediately after shooting that reply I googgled to see if I was alone, and I find this blog…!!!
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Dear all,
Exactly i have received the same exact email inviting me to participate in upcoming event of international conference of cardiology..but what concerns me the most..although they are inviting me to participate as a speaker they are not covering even the registration's fee! It is not common for a respected comitee inviting someone to become a speaker but they're not doing anything except inviting via email and they get all the advantages. So is this really a junk/spam?
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This company, BIT, has been around. I wrote about them last year – they seemed to be involved in some kind of war with a competing conference organizing company – Outsourcing To China
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