I'm hoping when you say "interrogate the presenter" it led to some constructive collaboration and not just meaningless nitpicks or dick waving.

I'm also hoping the people you worked with could tell the difference. If not, I hope you ran away from such a place. It's rare for someone truly that much smarter than everyone else to stick around without management siloing them into more focused work.

Also, I hope you meant presentations about theoretical or engineering work and not some vague business goal. If it's the latter most of us reading this would have similarly ripped it apart (constructively), hence the need for management especially at bigger orgs. The best way to handle vague business goals is to present it to upper management and let the implementation details be filled in by their team if they agree to proceed with work.