Major Mistakes in Current Scientific Presentations

CATEGORY: Other INTRODUCTION/PURPOSE: The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate to the orthopaedic surgeon many of the disturbing, current trends often seen in today’s oral paper presentations. Many of these are superfluous, confusing, offensive, not pertinent, difficult to interpret or unnecessary. These mistakes are often copied from other poor presentations, inhibiting adult learning in the audiences. METHODS: Observing large numbers of presentations at many local, regional and national meetings has led the authors to notice many disturbing trends that have insidiously crept into many of the paper presentations in recent years. Difficult to read fonts, low contrast slides, poor backgrounds, superfluous ornamentation, excessive wordiness, poor graphs, full sentences (actually read aloud!) in large numbers of bullet points, distracting animation, showing every detail or every case, family and pet photos, and unreadable bibliographies flashed quickly at the end have all been seen. Common clichés, such as ‘I realize this is a busy slide…‘ is commonly used, prefacing a table with multiple columns and rows and unreadable numbers, often with standard deviations! Even though it is unreadable, the presenter shows it anyway! RESULTS: Many of the disturbing trends that have been seen add nothing to the presentations, and, in fact, are distracting, taking away from the basic messages of the paper. While the presenter may think these items are important to add and necessary for completeness, they severely distract from the presentation’s effectiveness. Many of them make the audience give up and ‘tune out.’ Effective learning is minimal. As a result, audiences have become less connected and increasingly disinterested. Simplicity clarity are important to one’s message. CONCLUSION: Efficient, clear, non-distracting presentations are essential for adult learning. Currently, information overload and poor design threaten to obfuscate scientific sessions. The illustrated items should be eliminated and not copied from paper to paper.