Tips For Giving A Scientific Presentation: Fill & Download for Free

Reading papers becomes faster and easier the more expertise you gain. That being said, I would define effective reading as minimizing the energy you expend. Most scientists read papers in a specific order, possibly truncating before the last step, and most authors of scientific papers are cognizant of this style of consumption when they write their paper. The order is:Abstract. If it doesn't seem that the paper will be interesting/relevant/elucidating based on the abstract, most people will stop reading. Many papers will restate the abstract at the end of the introduction and in the conclusions (not all papers will delineate sections with special headings though), so if the abstract isn't clear, you might check those other places.Figures and figure captions. In a well-constructed paper, the story told in the figures is effectively an outline of the paper. Also, graphic information is often easier to absorb than verbal information in scientific communication. If you're an expert in the field, you will probably stop after the figures.Introduction (if you are not yet an expert) orMethods (if you are an expert)At this point, if you're feeling interested or obligated, read the rest of the paper in the order it is presented.One final point: in every field, there are papers that are so exquisitely well written that they will singlehandedly lift you out of the muddle produced by all the other papers. Seek out these papers, and don't give up until you find them. They won't necessarily be the ones with the largest number of citations.

Mark Twain's quote should drive our behavior: “If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”I teach scientific presentations, and I let the participants choose between a 7 minute presentation with a maximum of 7 slides including title and conclusion, and a four minute presentation with a maximum of 5 slides. The second slide in each scenario is always the highly visual "hook" slide.It does take more time to prepare 5 slides than it takes to prepare 7. More filtering, more focus, more thinking is required - as illustrated in Mark Twain's quote. The returns on your time investment are high however. The success rate and the number of questions at the end of your presentation are inversely proportional to the number of slides. Why is less more?Here are three good reasons.1. By focussing on the essential, highly specific details requiring a higher prior knowledge of the topic are left out. Less is more.2. By setting audience interest instead of audience knowledge as your goal, the number of questions is greater. Interest can be generated in fewer slides and more visually than knowledge.3. As the number of slides increases, the distance increases between the title (the bull's eye in a target) and each new slide (a new ring moving away from the center). The audience is losing the main thread set by the title. Attention is divided.

Drew Endy has given this a good amount of thought and I think that while he among others don't follow these rules, the presentation outlines some important habits.http://openwetware.org/images/0/00/EvenBetterGMPresentations3.pdfUnfortunately this doesn't apply specifically to journal clubs. Here are my tips:The premise is important. Rather than dive straight into the paper, you probably want to start 5-10 years back to understand why the scientists even bothered to do these experiments. Do the background reading and understand why the paper matters. Highlight some of the key prior work that leads up to the paper and emphasis the unknown questions left behind.Explain the hypothesis. What is the model that they propose. What other results could they get?Explain the experiment in as visual of a manner possible. If there is any quantum physics, try to explain that in a newtonian manner. Analogies that your audience would appreciate are great.Show the data, show their claims. Does their data match their claims? What are the limits of their claims. Do they miss any details in particular. If you're ambitious, this would be a good time to replot their data in ways that make more sense or show some of the paper's errors.Finally: what's next? Usually some graduate students just worked endlessly to crank this paper out and deserved their thesis. Unfortunately, that means there may be lots of loose ends and future questions. What's next and what can you do about it?Wrap up with comments about the writing style/story. Storytelling is a central part of scientific writing and their style may help you develop yours.