Depending on your temperament, you may first want to blow your steam, hit a punchball, or simply fume and blame the world for the crappy reviewers that don’t understand a thing. Once you’ve gotten over it, remember again that you are a researcher, so research. Research the cause for each negative comment. Here are a few of the causes you might find.
​

1. Y our English is not up to snuff.  It seemed clear at the time, but now you even wonder if you are the one who wrote this crap! How many times did you rewrite before sending your paper to the journal? Obviously not enough times. So blame yourself, rewrite, and apologize for that lack of clarity. (Don’t promise you’ll never be unclear again. You will.)
2. The reviewer’s English is not up to snuff. You tried to write like Proust, long ramblings sentences that contained enough detail to discourage the most eager reader. You are a master in handling complexity within the boundaries of two periods. You have nested your main clause inside a cluster of subordinate clauses, each with their own dependencies. The reviewer did not recognize your genius. They want simple sentences that they can easily understand as they are often pressed for time and review your masterpiece for free anyway. So humble yourself, become a Hemingway instead of a Proust. Rewrite in simpler sentences that will clarify what you mean, and apologize for the lack of clarity.
3. Your Science is not up to snuff. They poked holes in your not-so-tight reasoning. And they are right! Gee, despicable you! How dare you pollute the world of science with your imperfect thinking. Don’t you hate it when people are right and you’re not? Grow up. That’s what you did for many years, and it’s not over yet. Take it in stride. Thank the reviewer profusely for making you a better researcher, and protecting Science and others from your errors. Do what they want you to do, if reasonable. If not, then argue politely whilst still admitting that they made a good point which got all your attention. Plead that your contribution, although not as gargantuan as you would have liked, is still sufficient to publish in the interest of moving science forward at a faster pace. Elephants give birth every four years, but you are all for giving Science its daily egg.
4. Their Science is not up to snuff. They think they are poking holes with their red pencils in what turns out to be a ten inch thick armored steel plate. It is a sad world out there. Don’t cry for me, gelatina. You are weak, and I am strong. So defend yourself in the most civil manner. Apologize for not making truth self-evident. Clarify a paragraph. Add a few missing references. Send fifty more pages in supplementary material (scientific filibuster). Whatever you do, do not complain to the editor who happens to have chosen that reviewer, and it would look bad on him or her. And the next time you send a paper to that journal, suggest your own list of reviewers.

Everything you read is happening in your mind using the images I provided. The material for simulation today is a science fiction story based on the assumption that writing habits influence speaking habits, a reasonable assumption for educated people. 

What if it applied to scientists…
 
When you are ready to start the simulation just take your eyes to the next paragraph, and let your mind do the rest.  Time for me to get a cup of a medium-roast rainforest coffee :)
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It all happened in the name of Science. An anonymous survey among scientists revealed that science was not as rigorous as people assumed it to be. Reproducibility of results was low. In a bold move to restore confidence in scientific publications, the journal owners replaced their senior (in experience) editors with senior (in age and experience) scientists who imposed their writing style. Everything had to be written using the passive voice. Mentioning oneself was strictly prohibited. Captions of figures and tables were restricted to two lines. Facts had to be thoroughly established before the present tense could be used. And wherever a quantum of doubt existed, verbs indicating possibility were compulsory. This last requirement terrified honest scientists who got into the habit of turning well demonstrated facts into probable ones. 
 
Scientists found themselves trapped in a language ghetto. Little by little, the way they wrote influenced the way they spoke. The way they spoke created an affective gap between them, their spouse, their family and the rest of the world. Science had created a language and a style that had spread beyond its paper boundaries to invade the lives of good people. The phenomenon remained largely unnoticed until Suzan, the wife of Dr. Simon Edgar who had committed suicide in his lab, sent her husband's diary to the Washington Post. The diary's last entry dated June 1 2005 became national news.
 
“Today, for Suzan's birthday, a bouquet of flowers was bought. Prior to offering the flowers, the phrase “My darling, I love you” was repeated many times privately. She was then approached. When standing in front of me, after she had remained for at least seven seconds waiting, I heard myself saying “you are loved by me.” Tears of frustration appeared on her face and the flowers were not well received. I HATE WHAT SCIENCE HAS DONE TO ME AND I HATE MYSELF ”
 
The story spread to CNN and National Public Radio and before soon, scientists all over America exposed the destructive role language had played in their relationships with family and friends. So when Dr. Mark Whyndam, a scientist who, like Dr. Simon Edgar, had faced such hardships launched “Scientists Anonymous”, chapters of this society spontaneously opened not just in America but all throughout the world.
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“I’ll be brief”, said William. It was his third meeting at the Berkeley chapter of ‘Scientists Anonymous’. The meeting had just started. He introduced himself to the other three scientists sitting in the university lounge.
          “William, name common knowledge to some in attendance; Graduate of U.C.S.D; Domain, bio; Scientists anonymous, three months yesterday, doing better.”
His tone of voice indicated he had finished speaking, so the others clapped and said they valued his contribution according to the ritual common to all S.A chapters. William was concise to a fault.
          “I am Roberto”, announced the man sitting to the left of William. “Last week, I worked on my family photo album and replaced the captions of ‘picture 1—son’ and  ‘picture 2—daughter’ with more informative text. He opened the album on his lap and read aloud ‘My son Pedro at his two year old birthday party, face spattered with his first banana split; Ice cream from Walls, bought at Dixon’s ice cream shop and ripe Chiquita bananas imported from Colombia, bought at local foodstore”.
Roberto was clearly making great progress in writing meaningful captions, even though he still had to fight that compulsive urge to be unduly precise.  “We value your contribution Roberto” was still reverberating when the third participant stood up. She was in her thirties, and wore a conservative grey blouse tucked in a knee length black skirt.
          “Martha, I think, from the University of Nebraska.”
“Good evening Martha”, they chimed in.
            “I find it near difficult to be sure about anything. I can be potentially confused when it comes to stating what might be a fact.”
Roberto was the first to break the silence. With a grin, he said “We think we value your contribution Martha”. All laughed.
Last was a young Chinese woman.
“My turn?” she asked as she pointed to her nose.
All nodded with an encouraging smile. She stood up. 
“Xiao Hong, Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Science, PhD in IT. Good evening everyone.
“Good evening Xiao Hong,” the group responded.
 “Yesterday an unlabelled Mother’s Day meshed recyclable thermoplastic laundry basket present was given to mother and received with coldness.” 
After they had reversed engineered the compound noun (this took about 5 seconds), the group shouted “We value your contribution Xiao Hong”!
 
            The meeting had begun…
 
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Quintilian, a Roman who lived in 49AD, in his book ​The Institutes of Oratory , book 1, chapter 6 sentence 44, fully expresses my feelings regarding the scientific writing style: "If custom be merely termed that which the greater number do, it will furnish a most dangerous rule, not only for language, but what is of greater importance, for life."

Famous names in Science were invited to a gargantuan, 15-course banquet presided by Gargantua himself. Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Blaise Pascal, Leonardo Da Vinci, Louis Pasteur and many more accepted the invitation. On the menu of every course: adjectives. This story is about the first course on the menu - one cryptic word: RED.

The major-domo solemnly brought RED in a regular tureen that would feed a family of five, not an assembly of a thousand guests. Among the few people who grumbled, some had already taken their abacuses, calculators and smart phones to determine how much RED each would have based on the estimated volume of the tureen, size of soup spoon, and number of guests. At the sight of their puzzled face, Gargantua exploded in a gargantuan laugh. The laugh stopped abruptly as he snapped his fingers and a retinue of waiters appeared with a gargantuan cauldron of boiling water.

Each soup plate received one ladle of water, and each guest was asked how much RED they wanted from the tureen. Some, not knowing precisely how much they wanted, said I'd like some, please. Others, hoping RED was in powder form, said a heaped teaspoon. Einstein asked for a relative amount. Sir Isaac Newton took a prism out of his pocket and, after catching a ray of sun, directed the diffracted light to the white tablecloth. I want my soup to have this red color, he said, pointing at a precise hue in the rainbow. Using teaspoons to reach the right color proved impossible . The plate had already been emptied many times  - the soup was redder than red. Pasteur, offered to help with one of his own inventions: the pipette. Reaching the right color drop by drop worked better, but was far too time-consuming for the usually radiant Marie Curie. She  complained about Pasteur's "cold soup technology". Fortunately, Arnold Beckman had bought his spectrophotometer and in no time the renowned philanthropist had helped Sir Newton get his favorite 663 nanometer red, leaving Pasteur a little miffed.

Soren Sörenson insisted he’d be served enough RED so that his soup had a pH of exactly seven to 2 decimal points. To measure the pH, Sörenson had brought a thermometer and his own old-fashioned glass electrodes. The pH measurement  could only start as water temperature reached 30 degrees, so three waiters had been summoned to blow on the soup plate to speed up cooling while more waiters were standing by to drop their grains of alkaline sea salt and drops of lightly acidic RED to reach the requested pH. Again, Arnold Beckman, the hero of the day, came to the rescue with his own creation, the pH meter. Although the instantaneous pH reading  was a time-saver, the measure, not adjusted for the difference in temperature, was inaccurate.

This is when Steve Jobs, although not a scientist, who had been invited on account of his Apple Watch, demonstrated he could run an app on his watch to do just that. Thanks to him, the waiters soon resumed their procession to the relief of Benjamin Franklin, sitting 50 meters away, a hungry man with an empty plate. Had people been watching, they would have noticed that the pocket watch and chain in Franklin's dinner coat had been deftly transferred out of sight to a cavernous place in Franklin's breeches. Another Steve Jobs admirer.

The moral of this short story? Adjectives are subjective. Use them with moderation. What they mean to you may not necessarily be what they mean to others.

Now if you want to know what was the second course on the menu: it was LARGE.

It is the 10:15 am coffee break. Outside the conference room is a long table covered in thick cream-colored linen to enhance the traditional offerings: coffee, cream, Ceylon tea, brown and white sugar, as well as finger food to relieve the hunger pangs and make the long wait till lunch more acceptable. You have not joined the people who left the room because it is your turn to present right after the coffee break. You are standing next to the computer. Your slides are ready. And you are waiting for people to return. Your friend walks in, slowly, holding a cup filled nearly to the brim with piping hot coffee. She even thought of taking two sticks of your favorite raw sugar, and three small sealed cups of half and half. “Here, John. Take this. It will perk you up.” You smile, express your gratitude, move your hand towards the cup, and… STOP AND THINK.

Coffee or tea: Prior to a presentation, your body under stress naturally produces adrenaline to help you out by releasing glucose directly into the blood stream and by making you keenly aware of what is happening in and around you. That is why you become so self-conscious about your arms, your feet, your hands, and sometimes wonder where to put them!   Coffee and tea contain caffeine, which signals your kidneys to release even more adrenaline. Drinking coffee or tea  is not wise. But how about milk?

Milk: The milk protein thickens natural mucus, such as saliva. Your anxiety may overproduce saliva which, combined with milk, thickens. As a result, your vocal chords feel as though something is getting in their way. They trigger a throat clearing reflex while you are presenting. And the sound-trapping lapel microphone you are wearing takes great pleasure in amplifying that unromantic sound to nauseating levels over the room speakers.

OK. So coffee is out. You are about to present. The glass in front of you is empty. You are a bit nervous and you think that drinking might water down that anxiety of yours. The stainless steel pitcher of icy water glistening on the small table by the lectern looks so refreshing. Condensation sends rivulets of crystalline water down its slippery sides.  Your hand moves towards the pitcher, and… STOP AND THINK.

Iced Water: Bad for your vocal chords. You need to warm them prior to a talk by speaking, not by drinking icy water. Drinking warm water is better for you.

The next day. You are also to present on behalf of your manager who missed his flight. His talk is right after lunch. The morning drags on but lunch finally arrives, and you are famished. You look at the buffet set out for the conference participants, and you see an irresistible spaghetti Bolognese dish between the roasted spuds with braised pork and the broccoli/cauliflower/mushroom/sweet peas mix. You take the spaghetti serving spoon and lift it as carefully as a crane would lift its cargo prior to depositing it on your plate...  STOP AND THINK.

Spaghetti: The reason why the best restaurants offer a special towel for people who eat spaghetti is because the probability of decorating your white Armani blouse or shirt with red tomato sauce is fairly high. To wash the stain away only contributes to spread it or, given enough water, to give you that wet T-shirt look. All this, right before your presentation, of course, with no time to change clothes. To prevent the audience from seeing the red stain, you will try to hide it in a number of creative ways while speaking.  For example, you may face the wall standing sideways, or turn your back to the audience, thus reducing eye contact with the audience. You could also use your free hand  to hold some document in front of you during the whole talk instead of using it to punctuate your speech with gestures.

You return the spaghetti serving spoon to the dish and instead pile up less dangerous food on your plate. After all, you are famished. Yet, somehow, you eat faster than usual, probably because of the stress and the need to return to the conference room before others... STOP AND THINK,

Eating fast: Eating fast creates a number of conditions, none of them helpful to the presenter, namely gas, reflux, and bloating. Your belt, which until then kept your garment comfortably in place, turns into a vice that compresses your diaphragm and affects the quality of your voice. Do not forget the stomachal air and food gulps ascending your esophagus tube in total disregard of the law of gravity, and the intestinal borborygmi constantly calling themselves to your attention. They both create discontinuities in your speech and generate audience-repelling noises greatly amplified by your lapel mike.  


Food for thought: 


food can adversely affect how well you present.

By Jean-luc Lebrun

The second trap revealed that a question may not be a great audience warm up! How about a joke, then? “Start with a joke”, “make them like you by making them laugh”, the pundits say. 

And out they go, on a limb as always, out go the serious presenters who end up being the only ones chortling at their own jokes. The day before the event (it is easier to remember), they rush to the web for recycled jokes, or they try out the latest joke heard in a bar or at the canteen. Jokes often have sexual, religious, or racial connotations. Upon hearing these, many instantly move from a neutral attitude to one of dislike. Some may even get up and leave. I witnessed such disastrous joke-telling at an international gathering of scientists.
Some stay away from risky jokes and instead try self-deprecating jokes; after all, it’s ok to laugh at yourself, is it not?  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, or it might have been… had you been able to skip my talk and run to the beautiful beach in front of this hotel.” or ” I’m delighted to be the one who has been designated to help you sleep after today’s copious lunch. So I’ll do my best to make this talk as boring as I possibly can. Could we have the lights down now, please? Thank you very much.” The audience did not come to attend your talk expecting to be bored! Your self-deprecating humor à la John Cleese will be translated by the audience as follows: “His slides are boring. He has not even bothered to rehearse his talk at all. He really doesn’t enjoy presenting to us, but he’s doing it because he has to.”  
Last but not least, Starting a talk with a joke sets the tone for the presentation. People will expect more of the same. But then again, you will not deliver on the promises set from your entertaining start; after all, yours is a scientific presentation! 
In short, avoid jokes altogether at the start of your talk, even cartoons that may be funny. A play on word requires a good understanding of English. Idiomatic expressions, or culture specific jokes are beyond the level of comprehension of scientists with English as a second language or from different cultural backgrounds. 


To conclude, If you want the audience to relax at the very start of your talk, do what works 100% of the time: Face the audience, keep silent, and SMILE .

Do you have someone work the audience before your appearance on stage, as is the case for famous singers preceded by less known groups getting the audience into shape? Some university dean, or Nobel Prize winner celebrating your multiple journal citations, your incredible academic record, your long list of patents? If not, your audience is still cold when you appear behind the lectern. And this is why what the pundits recommend does not work: “Start with a question”, “Interact with the audience”, they say. And out on a limb they go, the misfortunate presenters for whom good advice but poor timing and unreasonable expectation garner nothing but the awkward silence of a reluctant audience.

Sometimes, the question is wrong. I recall the young scientist whose work featured the discovery of a gene associated with breast cancer. After introducing himself at the beginning of his talk, he probed the audience with this memorable question: “Has anyone had a family member die of breast cancer?”
Naturally, the long silence that followed was not an indication that the audience was made of healthy individuals whose parents were healthy and grand parents were still in their prime. The presenter must have felt like someone listening to the SETI space probe waiting for a signal betraying intelligent life in the universe, for there seemed to be no life at all in this audience. The question was too personal and too risky: imagine someone had replied: “Yes. My mother died of breast cancer last week.” What would the presenter have responded?

But most of all, the timing is wrong. At the beginning of a talk, the audience does not readily open up to someone they do not know. It adopts a wait-and-see attitude. The positively-charged presenter must create a low resistance channel to reach the neutral down-to-earth audience. And I know no better way to do that than by smiling and welcoming the audience. The presenter must also establish a potential difference (voltage) between him/her and the audience – for example, by creating a curiosity gap that the audience eagerly wants filled. The question is a good way to build that curiosity gap, particularly an intriguing, provocative question or statement like Friedman’s assertion that “the world is flat”. But that question must be rhetorical.

There is no need to force the audience into action at the beginning of your scientific talk. An audience that has had time to be interested in both the presenter and his/her topic is easier to engage.

By Jean-luc Lebrun

With this, the first of 10+ blog entries on presentation traps, we are entering the quagmires and the quicksands where many presenters get trapped. These traps are avoidable because the ones who lay them are none other than…the presenters themselves.
In your presentation, usually on one slide at the beginning in the motivation part, you compare your method to  1) methods widely accepted and recognized as adequate by the people in the field, or 2) the first (and now dated) method invented by the pioneer in the field or 3) only those selected methods that perform worse than yours. Actually, let me take back point 3 because you would never do that since all scientists display great intellectual honesty. You would never keep silent on methods that perform better than yours in certain aspects, or you would never filter out from your evaluation criteria the points where your method does not perform as well as other methods. After all, the reason why you can list the weaknesses of other people's methods is because they had the intellectual honesty to recognize them in their papers, or because you have the irrefutable evidence to support your assertions somewhere in your paper.

So what is wrong with comparing your method to other methods to claim superiority?

1) Because PowerPoint does not give you much space to illustrate or justify each limitation (font size 30 is restrictive), you list them all in bullet point form, relying mostly on the use of adverbs, adjectives, and judgmental verbs to validate your claim of superiority: slow, computationally  intensive, limited, complex, expensive, fails to, suffers from…

2) In the room, attracted by your title, chances are you will find the very people whose methods you critique: the experts, the “related work” folks. They came to learn from you, not to have their contribution to the field questioned or featured in a poor light.

3) Your summary judgmental evaluation on their methods is probably based on old reading, and the state of the art may have progressed since then, thus rendering your evaluation inaccurate.

As a result, your comparison strikes a match that will light the short fuse of the bomb bound to explode during your Q&A. These scientists you indirectly attacked will dispute or question your claims; after all, any adjective or adverb is a claim and a claim deserves fair justification before it can be accepted. Because the reputation of their work is at stake, they will bring you onto their turf – a place you know little about – and they will take great pleasure to demonstrate how inaccurate are your claims!

So here are your solutions:

If you have to expose limitations:

1) Choose the main limitation, illustrate it visually and scientifically so that it cannot be contested, and make sure you clearly define the scope under which that limitation applies.

2) Find a way to praise the method whose limitation you are presenting.

But you do not have to expose limitations. If the experts are in the room, they will ask questions to assess how well your method is likely to work in their field (and this is good!). If you do not know, you will be able to deflect such questions on the grounds that you have not tried it on their problems. At the same time, you will welcome their interest in your work  and propose to collaborate with them to extend  the application range of your method to their work– or to discover its boundaries (don’t say limitations!)

If you do not know how well your method would perform on untried problems, be conservative. Do not say “This method should also work in your field, or on your problem”. They could call your bluff and ask “On what ground do you form this opinion?”  If the experts in the audience detect what they consider unwarranted evidence in your answer, you will be seen as a scientist of much enthusiasm but somewhat delusional and lacking experience. 

Look at the photo above, how much bigger the orange seems depends a lot on the perspective, doesn’t it? An architect who has studied perspective would have a more accurate answer than a researcher in life science. But someone who has handled both fruit would have the best answer.

By Jean-luc Lebrun