
How to give a great scientific talk - hownottowrite
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07780-5
======
probably_wrong
While I don't disagree with the general points given here, I feel this is how
to give a great talk, not necessarily a great _scientific_ talk.

There's an interesting point buried here (emphasis mine):

> Presenters often fail because they try to deliver too much complex
> information. Language and content, normally, has to be designed with the
> non-specialist SCIENTIST in mind. “You have to think about the least
> knowledgeable person in your audience THAT YOU CARE ABOUT REACHING” says
> Rubenson.

If you are presenting a breakthrough in compilers in a compilers workshop,
maybe you don't want to start your talk explaining what a compiler is. Step 0
of every presentation should be "know your audience", and if your audience is
expecting complex information you will have to get into details at some point.

That doesn't mean that elitism is a good thing. I think both beginners and
professionals should walk our of your talk understanding something new. And a
good scientific presentation should be also a good presentation. But with
limited time (major conferences implemented 20 minutes talks this year), you
need to set your baseline knowledge somewhere.

~~~
el_cujo
>I feel this is how to give a great talk, not necessarily a great scientific
talk.

I come from a Biology background so maybe its different, but I have been to so
many talks where 90% of the audience is grad students and looking around the
room you can tell none of them are getting anything out of the talk because
they got lost in the first five minutes. Sure it would be silly for every
Neuroscience talk to waste five minutes explaining what a brain is, but even
seasoned scientists seem to take for granted that not everyone studies their
same corner of the field. Giving sufficient background info is severely
underrated in talks, as is very explicitly stating ideas that will be
necessary to appreciate the core thesis of the talk is. I'm sympathetic to the
fact that timing is tight and scientists want to save a significant amount of
time for their actual research, but if most of the room comes away from the
talk with absolutely nothing then it was a wasted effort. You're right that
the presenter should know their audience and that would fix things, its just
that in my experience, the presenter is almost always overestimating their
audience.

~~~
theaeolist
This is because (deliberately or not) what the speaker often wants to
communicate mainly is that they are smart. Getting everyone lost in the first
five minutes is not a big problem, quite the opposite. I have seen young
people who gave brilliant lucid and comprehensible talks who were criticised
by the experts in their narrow sub-field as "popularisers". I think many
people know how to give a great talk, but choose not to.

~~~
ticmasta
>> I think many people know how to give a great talk, but choose not to.

Not in my graduate school experience. Presenting was often viewed as "display
my research while I read from my research".

------
jrauser
For scientific/technical talks specifically, a truly useful technique I
learned from The Craft of Scientific Presentations[1] is the assertion-
evidence slide.

This type of slide has a complete sentence at the top that makes a substantive
assertion. Then the rest of the slide contains evidence for that assertion
usually in the form of a diagram, chart or table. This type of slide is the
backbone of a scientific presentation.

Generally, Alley's book is extremely useful.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Craft-Scientific-Presentations-
Critic...](https://www.amazon.com/Craft-Scientific-Presentations-Critical-
Succeed/dp/1441982787)

------
kkylin
All good points, but there are a couple mistakes I often see people (not just
beginners) make that did not get mentioned:

1\. State the problem (and convince the audience it matters) before rushing to
present a solution.

2\. Know the background of your audience, and figure out how well they need to
know the background to get something out of your talk.

And to the grad students: sometimes, when one only has 10-15 minutes to give a
talk, it is hard to give one that makes sense to junior members of the
audience and still speak to the experts. Don't give up! and don't be shy about
asking speakers questions afterwards. Sure, there are some people who think
they are too important to talk to grad students (or even faculty) they don't
know. The worst you get from asking such people a questions is you get brushed
off (don't worry, they're not likely to remember who you are, and it's not
likely to have a negative impact on your career). But more often people are
happy to go into details, and/or put you in touch with the postdoc / grad
student who knows all the gory details, etc. etc.

~~~
Joeri
_State the problem (and convince the audience it matters) before rushing to
present a solution._

Exactly. A presentation that is about a "what" or "how" often should start
with the "why". The audience needs to care about what is being presented, and
often the best way to do that is to remind them why they should care.

Amusingly, this is itself also a talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYeCltXpxw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYeCltXpxw)

------
bluenose69
My instructions to students always include the following.

1\. Tell people why the work excites you. 2\. Make sure that everyone in the
room learns _something_.

~~~
chrisseaton
What if the work doesn't excite you but it's still important to do?

~~~
xkcd-sucks
In academic research you'll be eclipsed by the truly obsessive people

------
rotorblade
I also find this a useful resource when preparing a talk (slides-based): David
Tong's "How to make sure your talk doesn't suck"

www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/talks/talk.pdf

------
Rainymood
Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what
you told them.

My key advice is to gear the talk to the audience and context. A TED talk will
have a completely different presentation style than an academic conference
where people might be actually interested in the more nitty gritty details.

~~~
crispyambulance

        > Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.
    

I see this a lot in talks and even in canned presentations and I don't
recommend it.

I think it comes from people padding their talks to fit within a certain time
frame. Or perhaps, some speakers have realized that enough audience members
utterly tune-out during the talk and need to be reminded of what the talk was
about just as they're waking-up and getting ready for the next meeting.
Somehow it got drilled into people that this is a necessary structure, but it
is not!

Much better, I think, to remove material from the talk to the point where the
speaker is making one, maybe two interesting assertions that are supported
succinctly. Every talk should leave time for discussion.

~~~
blt
This specific aphorism is given as advice by some well known MIT public
speaking guy. I think people take it too literally and make an outline slide
that's like "motivation, problem statement, method, experiments." So useful...

------
carusooneliner
The best way to make your talk memorable is to focus on substance over style.
Work hard on giving something new for the audience to chew on. Without
interesting content the audience will tune out no matter how well you
structure the talk.

------
julienchastang
Toastmasters International was mentioned in the article. I just finished my
Toastmasters “competent communicator” a few months ago. Here are some of my
tips for public speaking in general:

1\. Breathe! This is easier said than done when you are caught in an anxiety
driven feedback loop where your breadth gets more shallow making you even more
anxious. Halt this process by taking deep breadths.

2\. Limit caffeine. Caffeine exacerbates feelings of anxiety especially in
public speaking scenarios.

3\. Beware of ruminating and catastrophic thoughts. You don't need to fight or
eliminate them. In fact, doing so may make anxious feelings worse. But in a
kind and compassionate manner towards yourself, just acknowledge they are
there and the role that anxiety may play in those negative thoughts. Moreover,
if you really do screwup the presentation, with some time no one will
remember. We can recall great speeches but rarely terrible ones.

4\. Attend a local public speaking club such as toastmasters (plug here for
Speakeasy II here in Boulder, Colorado). Regularly speaking in front of
audiences will take you through the desensitization process and over time
giving a speech in front of a group of people will seem not so scary.

~~~
oh_sigh
How do toastmasters feel about performance enhancing drugs, like beta
blockers?

~~~
julienchastang
I have never heard of performance enhancing drugs ever mentioned in
toastmasters.

------
xamuel
Bar absolutely none, the SINGLE most important thing is: practice!! Rehearse
with a stopwatch, modify, and repeat until it stops sucking.

------
stareatgoats
Incidentally, yesterday I came across a great scientific talk that I think
checked all the boxes here, and then some. 100k views+, but deserves an even
larger audience IMO, could clear up some of the confusion about climate (the
facts parts):

Dan Britt - Orbits and Ice Ages: The History of Climate

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM)

Obviously, I think this is a great talk since I find the topic interesting
too. There is probably not much you can do if your audience is uninterested in
the first place.

------
porpoisely
If people are interested in some good scientific and philosophical lectures, I
found the ones by Royal Institution to be interesting. Haven't watched all of
them, but the ones on memory and neuroscience were particularly good.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution/videos)

------
j7ake
Uri Alon gave excellent advice on how to give a good talk. I feel Uri Alon
gives much more specific details on how to structure the talk, body language,
and most importantly how to handle questions.

[https://www.cell.com/molecular-
cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(09)0...](https://www.cell.com/molecular-
cell/fulltext/S1097-2765\(09\)00742-4)

------
janwillemb
> practice

+1. Practice out loud, rewrite, practice out loud again, rewrite, repeat,
repeat, repeat.

Also: let a real person listen to your talk at least once while rehearsing.
(Tip: use spouse, if available)

~~~
caillancm
For very important presentations, recording yourself can be useful too. It can
be excruciating to watch it again, but it forms part of a powerful iterative
loop.

------
sampo
Unrelated to the posted article, but native English speakers might have a
small disadvantage in getting understood, because they don't always know which
word choices are less known among those who learned English as a second
language.

And native British English speakers can have a larger disadvantage in getting
understood, among people who know English well but are not used to British
accents. I was recently in a workshop where I had no trouble understanding the
talks given by Chinese, Finnish, German, Indian, Russian, Swedish and whatever
speakers. But a native British person, I really had to concentrate because
they spoke fast and with a heavy accent. American accents I always find easy,
though.

[http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161028-native-english-
spe...](http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161028-native-english-speakers-are-
the-worlds-worst-communicators)

~~~
lou1306
> American accents I always find very easy, though.

That might possibly be due to the hegemony of the American movie/television
industry? In my case, I know that a majority of the English-spoken
entertainment I consume is American-made, so much that British English now
gives me a distinct, "exotic" feeling.

~~~
sampo
There is this observation that British and American singers sound much alike
when they sing. They lose most of their accent, and they just sing in "neutral
English". And that neutral English is much closer to American than British. So
I'm inclined to think that the British just have more of an accent than
Americans. The British accent contains more intonations, which one cannot use
when the intonations are dictated by the music.

"Why British Singers Lose Their Accent When Singing"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8RdLtZWlc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8RdLtZWlc)

~~~
chrisseaton
I can't understand why people would think a non-geographic-specific American
accent would be 'neutral' compared to any other. What does 'neutral' even
mean? The letter sounds as in the written version of a word?

American accents have as many weird dropping of sounds, adding of extra
sounds, and other little curiosities compared to the written version as any
other accent does.

For example a non-geographic-specific American accent pronounces 'water' as
'warder', 'butter' as 'budder', and 'duty' as 'doody' \- it's definitely
taking things away and adding things and not just being neutral.

~~~
sampo
> What does 'neutral' even mean?

Less intonations.

~~~
chrisseaton
Maybe I don't know enough about linguistics and terminology, but aren't
Americans famous for their dramatic intonation, especially at the end of
sentences which aren't questions?

