[netman21]

Something I learned after many cases of being asked to rush down to studio for a live appearance to talk about some security event: Have your 30 sec response ready to go. The talking head newscaster is going to completely screw up the question. Ignore the question and say something smart. Otherwise you are playing into their hands and will say something as stupid as he/she did.

[njoglekar]

Love this. Answer the question you want to answer.

[bjelkeman-again]

Politicians do this all the time and we never get any useful answers out of them as a result. Not sure it is an improvement.

[streptomycin]

Another maybe-negative use of this strategy, as conveyed to me by a famous professor:

If you give a technical talk and afterwards someone asks a question you don't know how to answer, instead answer a similar question you can answer. Then the audience will think you just misunderstood the question, rather than thinking that you didn't know the answer. This strategy won't work if the questioner is persistent, but usually they aren't.

[privong]

> This strategy won't work if the questioner is persistent, but usually they aren't.

I think it may only seem to work to the person answering the question. Having sat in on many talks, it's often noticeable when a person answers a different question vs genuinely misunderstanding.

In astronomy, at least, I'd rather admit I didn't know the answer than try to fake it by answering a different question.