The main problem is that most presenters are not even aware that this is an issue. Thus they never get better, even after hundreds of presentations, because they just don't know this simple fact. They think that  presenting their latest-greatest data would surely dazzle the audience, right? Wrong. The most common problem in a talk is the presentation of the cart well before the horse, with a perfectly organized horse and cart picture in only one person's mind - the presenter's.

Here's a typical scenario: Presenter puts cart before horse the first time --> "Joe the Scientist" in the audience struggles fiercely for several minutes to understand ---> By the time Joe is on board, presenter is 5 slides ahead ---> Joe REALLY tries again, and FINALLY gets it ---> now presenter is 15 slides ahead. Though Joe came to the talk in complete earnest, he gives up. Starts thinking about own projects or sneaks away. 

Here's what I do. Prepare the talk 2-3 days in advance and pretend I am "Joe the Scientist" looking at the talk. Put forth a slide, mutter what you would say about that slide to Joe, and see if Joe understands. Does Joe have reasonable questions that you have not answered? Are you assuming Joe knows things that he really does not? Then the slide needs more work. DO  NOT go on to the next slide until Joe is happy. Keep doing this until Joe is a satisfied customer! For me, usually Joe is never absolutely happy, but its time to give the talk anyway...  ​

       The introduction goes reasonably well, considering that the folks at the podium are not exactly spring chickens. The session chair reveals the obligatory hilarious episode from the speaker’s past (it’s mildly funny) and the speaker starts with the customary platitudes over how grateful he is for the “opportunity”, and how it’s wonderful it is to see so many people awake at this hour, etc. And then comes the actual talk. For some reason this guy who has made stunning discoveries in the field starts giving a talk that makes you wish that you were chewing paper instead.

       For starters, the monotonous drone is like a series of dull thudding noises where you can only catch occasional words that spark a few of your remnant synapses…”chemogenetic” …..maybe ”CRISPR”….. On each of these inflection points, you try to focus, thinking now THIS part HAS to be interesting. But no matter how much you try to bring yourself back, it is hopeless. You discreetly reach for the phone but there is really nothing new (no one is stupid enough to be awake at this hour). Unfortunately, it’s too late to get up and leave now (you had to take a middle seat on one of the front rows, didn’t you!). So you sit and you endure. This is beyond boring; this is like death itself.
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       After thirty minutes of this torture (still at least thirty minutes left!) you start fantasizing about doing something ridiculous, just to see what would happen. Like – and again, these are merely hypothetical scenarios – violently kicking the chair in front of you (what’s with this dude’s ponytail?) or thinking about just getting up and screaming “FIRE” and start running around the room like a madman. You look around and there are a lot of glazed eyes glued to the podium. It’s impossible to say how they feel but trust me their pain is just as great as yours’. You are in the company of a pretty common entity: The good scientist who gives bad talks.

​       Now to be fair – just to get the fairness thing out of the way – there can be many reasons why you feel that the good scientist is an awful speaker. It might be you. I mean you did drink those three beers last night, and you were never really a morning person. The stuff might be just going over your head, you are just a kid. Also let’s be kind here, it might be a personality thing. Some people just speak in monotones, you know. However, when you see the same speaker again and again at meetings (ironically, scientists giving talks are almost never chosen for their speaking ability), and the reaction induced is exactly the same; one has to conclude that it’s not you. It’s them.

       So what is the singular most important reason that good scientists give bad talks? All will be revealed in Part 2. Feel free to post your guesses on Twitter (or the comments section).  

The first common reason for rejection is that the authors simply overestimate the significance of their findings. Your experiments may be rigorous, the question may be an important one in your field, and yet the significance of your findings to Science in general may be limited. This is just a fact that authors must realize. Science works in unpredictable, meandering ways. Often experiments that you think will change the world turn out to be pretty lame in the end, while side-projects spearheaded by naive, wide-eyed undergrads yield stunning insights. Thus the end product can be very different from the start, and it is important to objectively evaluate your final manuscript. This is very difficult of course, as authors are personally invested in their favorite projects. For trainees, often matters are made worse by mentors who insist on submitting everything to glossy journals, and an experienced ally who is not afraid to tell the truth is a big asset. However I have found that such friends are rare, and most people are happy to give superficial "positive feedback". This is completely worthless and I suggest that authors stay away from such "mentors".   

The second, perhaps more common, reason is that the authors simply do not clearly state the significance of their findings. Worse, they are completely unaware that they are not doing so. Most papers are written in a dry style, listing experiments in the exact sequence that they were done, with no effort made to engage the audience. The result is that the reader is slammed with a series of complicated experiments with no end in sight and fails to see the significance. It is a classic case of being lost in the trees and not seeing the forest, and I have seen it so many times its not funny. The Reviewer/Editor cannot see it because the writer is not stating it clearly! One obvious reason for this is that scientists get almost no training in writing. But I feel there is also a cultural problem that scientists don't think that it is important to write clearly. While they may not directly say this, few make any effort to learn how to write clearly. Whatever one thinks about writing is up to them, but having been on many study sections and reviewed numerous papers I am absolutely certain that clear writers are getting most of the prizes. 

So what can one do? Besides reading and re-reading the book on writing clearly ("On Writing Well" by William Zinsser) until the cows come home, one thing that helps me is to write the abstract first. I know that this is exactly the opposite of what the pundits preach, but I always write and re-write the abstract first (often languishing in it for weeks or months), until the sequence of events (and significance) is clear in my head. Sometimes this reveals major insights, and at other times it tells me that the Science is solid but its not that significant after all. Once this logic is clear, the paper can be written. Often this exercise also helps in framing/designing final follow up experiments, and that is a bonus. So happy thinking and happy writing!