Giving a scientific talk – tips
for success
Colm McDonald
National University of Ireland, Galway
Outline of talk
• First I will talk about some key principles of
scientific presentation
• Then I will focus on how to prepare slides
• Then I will give some do’s and don’ts
• Then we can have a Q&A bit
Scientific talk
Three core principles
• preparation
• preparation
• preparation
More confident, professional, likely to stick to time and
focus on key messages, and address questions well
How do I prepare?
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Remember that you are the expert!
Revise scientific material and most recent lit.
Finalise results in time
Who are you speaking to?
- peers
- experts
- scientifically informed audience
- students
- lay people
& adjust content accordingly
• Prepare Powerpoint slides
- introduction
- methods
- results
- discussion/conclusion
• Practice and refine
• It is normal to feel anxious!
• The more you focus on the presentation at hand,
the easier it is
• The more you gain exposure to presenting, the
easier it gets
How should I present myself?
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Dress and behave professionally
Be in plenty of time
Familiarise with equipment
Try to display enthusiasm
Face the audience and talk to them!
Use facial expressions/gestures
Find your own voice (be prepared to ignore a lot
of this advice….)
How to prepare slides
• Some basic principles about form
- good contrast
- consistent background/colours/font
- minimum 24 font – should be easy to read
- principle of 7 lines per slide, 7 words per
line (but don’t be hamstrung by this)
- bulletpoints and phrases – not sentences
- use graphics instead of text/tables
• Some basic principles about content
- what will interest your audience?
- your audience should listen to you rather
than read the screen
- the slides are there to support your story
- the slides are to clarify rather than confuse
- you must stick to time and leave time for Qs
- estimate about 1 minute per slide
- structure presentation so enough time for
each section
Introduction
• Should motivate the audience to believe that the
topic is worth researching
• Amount of background will depend upon the
audience
- eg clinical audience, tell them what a
knockout mouse is
- nonclinical, tell them what schizophrenia is
• May include aims/hypotheses
Methods
• Amount of detail will depend upon audience
- peers/experts may be more interested in
deviations from normal experimental technique
- if standard, do not explain exhaustively
- use narrative approach – what I did…
Results
• This is core of presentation – leave enough time
for it!
- present key results and most salient details
- use graphics to emphasise key results
- don’t feel you have to include everything
you have done – questions at end
Conclusions
• Summarise your results and their implications
• Relate to aims/hypotheses and existing literature
• Need not be exhaustive
– likely to be further interrogated in questions
• May like to include section on future work
• Acknowledge and thank collaborators,
supervisors and funding source
Questions and Answers
• You must leave time for this
• More questions means the talk was stimulating
(not unclear)
• Can be daunting since less predictable
• Remember you are the expert!
• Repeat the question – audience may not have
heard if no mic, and gives you time to think
• Don’t waffle and don’t insult the questioner!
Some Do’s and Don’ts
• Do practice your talk – incl. with peers
- especially first bit
• Do stick to time - don’t force the chair to interrupt!
• Do not compensate for lack of time by talking fast
• Do not compensate for lack of space by
squashing lots of text/graphics into slides
• Do doublecheck for spelling/grammatical errors
• Do not overestimate your audience – do explain
things simply, especially at start
• Do not read the slides
- wordy slides are for speaker not audience
- exception is quotation
- OK to use index cards
• Do talk to the audience
• DO NOT SHOUT AT THEM WITH CAPITALS
• Do turn to slides if you want your audience to
• Do not sit down and face your computer
• Do speak loudly and slowly – can be helpful to
pick out a couple of people and talk to them
• Do not include material in your slides that you
are not going to talk about
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Do use humour
Do not feel you have to use humour
Do not use raw output (eg. SPSS,uncoded axes)
Do make your own figures
Do use laserpointer/mouse to explain figures
Do make sure any clips/links work in advance
Do not waffle in Q&A session
Do listen to the question
Do not insult the questioner
Do say “I don’t know” or “I will have to check”
A poor figure
A poor table
A better figure
7.5
p=0.002
p<0.001
7.0
Total Hippocampal Volume (ml)
p=0.04
6.5
6.0
5.5
5.0
Healthy Comparison (n = 298)
Bipolar not on lithium(n = 68)
Bipolar on lithium(n = 94)
Use other’s good images and acknowledge sources
Hypothetical roles of schizophrenia genes at a glutamatergic
synapse.
Gray and Roth, Molecular Psychiatry 2008
Pictures/cartoons can lighten – don’t overdo it
Acknowledgements
My supervisor
My collaborators
My funding sources
Questions