The classic children's game of Telephone, in which one person whispers a sentence into the ear of another, who then whispers it to one more person...and so on until the last person in the chain repeats an incredibly garbled or unrecognizable version of the original sentence, is meant to teach children the danger of repeating rumors.
(I don't think that lesson ever "took" with me, but that's not the point here.)
Here's the grown-up version:
Person 1: "Hey, did you go to that seminar this afternoon?"
Person 2: "Yeah, it was pretty good, I guess."
P1: "I was stuck doing experiments. What'd they talk about?"
P2: "Well, the gist was that they think that walnuts are more bitter than pecans because of their shape."
P1: "Huh, really?"
P2: "Yeah, and they did a couple of experiments to show it. First they ground up walnuts and reformed them into the shape of pecans, and the taste-testers found them less bitter than regular walnuts; and then vice versa."
P1: "Whoa, really? That's a surprise, but what if you're changing the chemical composition by the grinding?"
P2: "Yeah, they had some kind of control for that, but I can't remember what it was."
Person 3 [wandering by]: "Are you guys talking about that seminar? I was confused by the talk because I'm not sure they ever actually proved that walnuts really are more bitter than pecans, and it's not just an artifact of the aroma."
P2: "No no, they addressed that in the experiment in the second half with the plugged noses."
P3: "No, I thought during that experiment the eyes were blindfolded but the noses weren't plugged."
P2: "What?? No, they definitely plugged the noses. I think."
P3: "I was pretty sure they blindfolded people instead."
P2: "Really? I could have sworn they plugged the noses."
P3: "I guess I could have missed it, but I don't think so."
P2: "Was that on the slide with all the blue on it?"
P3: "The second slide with a lot of blue, not the first slide."
P2: "I only remember one slide with a lot of blue."
P1 [bewildered]: "So did you guys believe the data, or not?"
(Simultaneously) P2: "Yes." P3: "No."
What's funny is that these scenarios occur even when both seminar attendees are smart, interested in the talk [read: awake throughout], and well versed in the literature.
It's hard to believe that eyewitness testimony is ever considered reliable.
15 years ago
5 comments:
There is actually an important lesson here in terms of designing seminar presentations.
First, a scenario:
"Hey. Do you know DJMH?"
"Oh, yeah. I saw her give a presentation at the blahblah meeting a few weeks ago."
"Cool! How was her presentation?"
"It was fucking awesome!"
"Oh? What was it about?"
"I don't exactly remember, but it was fucking awesome!"
Lesson: Unless someone is working in an *extremely* closely-related area as you, they will remember little if any of the actual scientific content of your presentation. But they sure as shit *will* remember whether it was "awesome" or "sucky".
That is why there is a fuckton more to giving memorably good presentations than just "letting the science speak for itself".
It's so true...I'm often left with lasting impressions of what I thought of the person's scientific approach, but not necessarily impressions of data.
LOL. And what C PP said.
CPP +1!1!1!!!!!11!
Great post, Dr.J!
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