Guidelines for giving a bad scientific talk

Disclaimer

This is a comedy project, initially started by George Datseris and Alexander Schlemmer. The project is heavily inspired by the very funny "How to write unmaintainable code", from Roedy Green: https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~susan/475/unmain.html . The idea is to create something similarly funny but for giving scientific talks/presentations instead. Even though comedy is the main reason this repository exists, it could still raise awareness. If you find that yourself or your colleagues already follow these guidelines, it could be good warning sign to spend more time preparing your talks!

Guidelines

Preparation, Time management, Execution

• You must prepare your talk only while inside a train and it is preferred to do so during the trip towards the conference.
• Be sure to spend 5 minutes during your introduction talking about your past job, which is completely unrelated to your current job.
• While being in the middle of your talk you will occassionally see the chairperson raising their two fingers making a "V". This in no way means you have 2 minutes left! It means "Victory" because your talk is progressing so well.
• Variations and stressing in voice intensity are only for poetry and do not fit the seriousness of a scientific talk. Go through your entire talk while maintaining a constant pitch and intensity level with your voice.
• If you can do the entire talk without catching a breath, it's all the more impressive!
• Every question after your talk is not really a question. It is an invitation for lengthy discussion. After starting to answer the specific question, start talking at length about other matters, and even deviate from the original question. Remember: the chairperson cannot stop you if you don't stop talking!

Content

Introduction

• When giving a talk in an audience of experts in a field, always include the most basic introduction possible (e.g. introduce the wave-particle duality in a conference about string theory). Start your talk by saying "of course I don't have to show these slides in an audience of experts", but show each and every slide irrespectively. Starting with something the audience is familiar with will make you more approachable!
• Do not fall into the common trap of putting your work into context with existing literature. This will give the impression that your work is not novel and people will think lowly of you!
• Every time you enter a new section of your talk, start with a little story telling how you came doing this project. A good example is "One sunny Thursday I was listening to this talk... and that happened... and I remembered my bachelor days...". It is well known that scientists appreciate fairytales.

Equations

• Have overly complicated equations in your slides. Claim that you can't explain these overly complicated equations, but then start explaining them any way.
• Be sure that the symbols in the equations are never explained. You want your audience to have questions after the talk after all!
• If your equations do not span the entire slide end-to-end, it is not impressing enough.

Figures

• If you include figures in your talks, make certain that they have no legends and no lebels. Such things spoil the suspense for the viewer!
• The x-axis should never be something simple, e.g. time. Instead plot your data versus the logarithm of 1/time. It is important for your viewers to exercise their brains and monotonous transformations are trivial anyway.
• It is very inspiring for the viewers to view slides with several overly complicated figures. This feeling of not understanding anything reminds them of the joy of the unknown and why they became scientists in the first place.
• For the crucial parameters for the results of your model, never bother remembering their value or putting this value on the slide. When the audience ask for this value say "I don't know". This is a good opportunity for you to mention your paper, and how the person asked can find the value there!
• You might think that having large and easy to see figures is a good idea. However, instead of making the figures larger, it is better to have about 70% of the slide to be white space around them. After all, it is well known that it is the frame that makes the painting.

Text

• A figure says more than 1000 words. So conversely - instead of putting the figure - feel free to just place a text slide describing your method in full detail. To be on the safe side, just read the whole slide during the presentation. People will very likely appreciate your sophisticated style in line of great poets and novelists.
• 1000 words can be described as a "wall of text". Since you already have a wall, why not build an entire castle? Have several slides with 1000 words each; that way you will create an impenetrable castle worthy of praise from your adversaries (in this case, the audience).
• Make sure you include screenshots of title+abstract of published papers of yours in every slide. It doesn't have to be relevant to the slide.
• When in an international conference, show off your multi-cultural background. For example, have the headings of the slides in Russian, or use German sentences in text. The audience will not be confused, but rather impressed by your background!

Acronyms

Acronyms serve two very important purposes: first, you can heavily compress your slides saving valuable space for even more figures and text. Second, they create that unique in-group feeling as soon as people from the audience recognize acronyms only known by experts. People not familiar with some acronyms will enjoy the fun guessing what is meant. Don't waste your precious time explaining the acronyms, as it would spoil the fun anyway.

You will immediately recognize the positive effect of lots of acronyms on the atmosphere during the talk.

Results & Messages

• Key messages are overrated. Instead of boiling your work into simple to understand concepts, list every single result you had in the last 10 years.
• Conclusion slides take valuable space when there could be overly complicated plots instead. Don't bother making them.

Contributing

Please consider contributing to our guidelines!

How can you know whether your comment fits here? Well, if during a talk you noted something you really disliked, then it probably fits here. Just present it in a comical way :D