The sad state of scientific talks (and a thought on how we might help fix it)

Just got back from a Keystone meeting, and I’m just going to say it (rather than subtweet it): most of the talks were bad. I don’t mean to offend anyone, and certainly it was no worse than most other conferences, but come on. Talks over time, filled with jargon and unexplained data incomprehensible to those even slightly outside the field, long rambling introductions… it doesn’t have to be this way, people! Honestly, it also begs the question as to why people bother going to these meetings just to play around on their computers because the talk quality is so poor. I’ve heard so many people say the informal interactions are the most useful thing at conferences. I actually think this is partly because the formal part is so bad.

Why? After all, there are endless resources out there on how to give a good talk. While some tips conflict (titles? no titles? titles? no titles?), mostly they agree on some basic tenets of slide construction and presentation. I wrote this blog post with some tips on structuring talks and also links to a few other resources I think are good. And most graduate programs have at least some sort of workshop or something or other on giving a talk. So why are we in this situation?

I think the key thing to realize is that giving a good talk actually requires working on your talk. A good talk requires more than taking a couple minutes to throw some raw data onto a slide and winging it with how you present that data. For most of us, when we write a paper, it is a long iterative process to achieve clarity and engagement. Why would a talk be any different? (Oh, and by the way, practice is critical, but is not in and of itself sufficient—have to work on the right things; see aforementioned blog post.)

I think the fundamental issue is the nature of feedback and incentives for giving research talks. Without having these structured well, there is little push to do the work required to make a talk good, and they are currently structured very poorly. For incentives, the biggest problem is that the structure to date is all about what you don’t get in the long term, which are often things you don’t know you could get in the first place. Giving a good talk has huge benefits and opens the door to various opportunities long term, but it’s not like someone is going to tell you, “Hey, I had this job opening, but I’m not going to tell you about it now because your talk stunk." Partly, the issue is that the visible benefits of good presentations are often correlated to some extent with brilliance. Take, for instance, Michael Elowitz’s talk at this conference, which my lab hands down voted as the best talk of the conference. Amazing science, clear, and exciting. Michael is a brilliant and deservedly highly successful scientist. Does it help that he is an excellent communicator of his work? Of course! To what extent? I don’t know. What I can say is that many of the best scientists presented their work very well. Where do cause and effect begin and end? Hard to say, but it’s clearly not an independent variable.

Despite this correlation, I still firmly believe that you don’t have to Michael Elowitz-level brilliant to give a great talk. So then why are all these talks so bad? The other element beyond vague incentives is feedback. The most common feedback, regardless of anything about the talk you give, is “Hey, great talk!” Maybe, if you really stunk it up, you’ll get “interesting talk”. And that’s about it. I have many times gotten “Hey, great talk” followed by a question demonstrating that I totally did a terrible job explaining things. I mean, how is anybody ever going to get better if they don’t even get a thumbs-up/down on their presentation? The reason we don’t get that feedback is obviously because of the social awkwardness to telling someone something they did publicly was bad. The main place where people feel safe to give feedback is in lab meeting, which while somewhat helpful is also one of the worst places to get feedback. Asking a bunch of people already intimately familiar with your story and conversant in your jargon about what is clear or not is not going to get you all that far, generally. Also, the person with the most authority in that context (the PI) probably also gives terrible talks and so is not a good person to get feedback from. (Indeed, I have heard many, many stories of PIs actively giving their trainees bad advice.) Generally, the fact that most people you are getting feedback from aren’t themselves typically good at it is a big problem.

Okay, fine…

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

Again, I think the key missing element is honest feedback—I think most talk-givers don’t even realize just how bad their talks are. As I said, few people are going to tell someone to their face that their talk sucks. So how about the following: what if people preregister their talk on a website, and then people can anonymously submit a rating with comments? Basically like a teacher rating, but for speakers at a conference. You could even provide the link to the rating website on the first slide of your talk or something. This would have a number of advantages. First off, if you don’t want to do it, fine, no problem. Second, all feedback is anonymous, thus allowing people to be honest. Also, the comments allow people to give some more detailed feedback if they so choose. And, there is a strong positive incentive. With permission, you could have your average rating posted. This rating could be compared to e.g. the overall average, and if it’s good—which presumably it is if you decided to share it :)—then that’s great publicity, no?

One problem with this, though, is it doesn’t necessarily provide specific feedback. Like, what was clear or not? Comments could provide this to some extent. Also, if you, as the speaker, are willing, you could even imagine posting some questions related to your talk and seeing how well people got those particular points. Of course completely optional and just for those who really care about improving. Which should be all of us, right? :)

Oh, and one suggestion from Rita Strack was to promote the 15 minute format, which is short enough to either require concision and clarity, or, should that not happen, is over fast! :)

Some suggested (e.g. Katie Whitehead) that we incentivize good talks by doing Skype interviews or having them submit YouTubes, etc. for contributed talks. In principle I like this, but I think it's just a LOT of work and also conflates scientific merit with presentation merit, so people who don't get a spot have something other than their presentation skills to blame. Still, could work maybe.

Another, perhaps more radical idea, is to do away with the talk format entirely. Most scientists are far more clear when answering questions (probably for the simple reason that the audience drives it). Perhaps we could limit talks to 5 minutes followed by some sort of structured Q&A? Not sure how to do that exactly, but anyway, a thought.

Anybody want to give this a try?