The talk's the thing

Scientists present talks all the time. The talk is one of the main tools of our trade. Some people give so many you wonder how they fit in experiments at all. Lab heads give seminars and conference speeches to sell their work to the world, and to attract the best people to work for them. Aspiring lab heads give job talks to sell themselves to potential employers. Nearly everyone gives talks so that their colleagues know what they’re doing. In every case, speakers are trying to persuade the audience about something, and whether or not they succeed really matters. As talks are this important, you might think that all speakers would work hard at being clear and persuasive. In fact, as anyone who attends conferences will testify, the quality of presentations varies hugely. I’m not talking about some scientists’ work being better than others — though stunning results are a definite advantage — but when a really good speaker takes the rostrum, you can see people in the audience opening their eyes, perking up, and being persuaded. Sadly, the opposite happens far more often. The stereotypical ‘egghead’ scientist is, by convention, completely unable to communicate with the outside world, but an inability to talk persuasively about science to one’s peers looks like carelessness. Talks always carry unspoken messages. The overt part (here are the results, here’s my interpretation, and here’s who did the experiments) is only half of the story, and is often in the literature anyway. But most people go to most talks to pick up the more subtle messages that will tell them whether the person is going places, and whether they should bother to read the lab’s work. With really skilled speakers, this undercurrent is nearly invisible. The data appear to explain themselves, and the audience wander off to coffee afterwards wondering why their own experiments don’t give such clear results. It’s all in the performance, of course. Raw numbers and pictures don’t tell stories, people tell stories.