Originally submitted as a Reader Response on 15th February 2008

I absolutely agree with author that keeping big picture in mind is extremely important to good scientific presentations, but I disagree with the author’s suggestion to have “some sort of dramatic conclusion” and in deliberately trying to make presentation interesting.
The conclusions are not under scientist’s hand. While it is very important to have clarity in presentation, deliberately trying to make presentation more interesting e.g. by adding audio-visuals or telling personal stories makes presentation interesting only to people not interested in science. In my experience, even the best sense of humor can only distract in a scientific presentation.

Submitted by: Gajinder Pal Singh
E-mail: gpsingh@igib.res.in
Occupation: Ph.D. Student
Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology