Scientists don’t need to be superstar public performers like Taylor Swift, but they can learn from show business.Credit: Carlos Alvarez/Getty for TAS Rights Management
You’re at a conference. The lights are low, it’s the last speaker of the day, engagement has hit rock bottom and the audience completely tunes out. Phones come out and everyone is running the clock down; the speaker even apologizes for getting in the way of the networking drinks.
Re-imagine this setting as a gig: the lights are low, it’s the last act of the day, the band walks onto the stage, engagement goes through the roof and the audience explodes with excitement. No one wants it to end. In fact, the artist returns for an encore.
And now ask yourself, could the energy felt at a concert be recreated in a conference hall?
I research and teach immunology at Imperial College London and have also dabbled in public engagement as a popular-science author, so a chunk of my job focuses on public speaking. I have even tried stand-up comedy (the audience laughed, sometimes in the correct places). I also love live music. But the question is, what can researchers learn from performers to improve science talks?
Why scientists talk
Conference talks are a key feature of scientific careers. An invitation to give a keynote presentation at a reputable international conference is seen as a marker of esteem and ticks boxes for tenure and promotion. The extent to which a person’s ability to engage audiences is taken into account when selecting speakers is debatable — people are chosen for having ‘an interesting story’, which isn’t necessarily the same as the ability to tell an interesting story.
Talks don’t just raise an individual’s profile; they can be a platform to highlight a team that also contributed to the work. A great talk will advertise your laboratory, department or institution. To put it simply, if you are doing cool work (and you can explain it in a cool way), you might attract cool people to come and do it with you in a virtuous cycle.
Scientific bedlam at the world’s weirdest and wildest research conference
Beyond self-publicity, the point of science talks is to inform, educate and inspire others. In a research ecosystem that increasingly churns out overwhelming numbers of papers, scientific presentations are an important method of highlighting your work to a wider audience. And often, they can help you to engage with a broader circle than your own. We are all somewhat habitual in the papers that we read and the journals that we browse, and often the best ideas cross-pollinate from other fields. Moreover, a good talk can advertise stories to journal editors, who might be more open to a paper that is based on a talk than to one that lands in their inbox without context.
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