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Mazty on 06 January 2013
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GameOver22 said:
Mazty said:

When presenting work you present hypothesis, results and the potential meanings of the findings. There is usually little time to be critical of the work when giving a presentation; it's just not the done thing. If someone wants to know exactly what the scientist is presenting, they will then read the paper themselves. 
However scientists are known for not being the best when it comes to communicating. However I would say that I've never come across one with an ego. The cast of Jersey Shore have an ego. Someone studying magnets on a nano scale tends to be less outgoing...

What do you mean by presentation? Truth is.....I rarely even see material for popular consumption follow that strategy (hypotheses, results, findings). It actually tends to jump straight to the findings, partly because of the way they present issues......meaning they don't really address any single experiment. Instead, they condense the history of a field into more of a bullet-point presentation.

Also, I find it hard to believe that scientists can't find the time to address the limitations of their work in an 30 minute or hour long tv spot.....or a mass market book that ranges between 200-500 pages. I say this because there actually have been books that I think do this quite well while others do not.

In academia, I undestand why a presentation glosses over criticisms because these issues can be addressed in the question/answer session (I've still seen academic presentations address possible limitations/alternative explanations....depends on the time someone has), however, you can't do this with a tv series/book because of the lack of inteaction, so you should anticipate the questions and citicisms someone might have and address or mention these problems.


Presentation as in the presentation of academic work at an academic conference. 

Presenting academia for popular consumption is pointless. As posted above, that video demonstrates why this is the case. 

TV spots....TV spots are what editors of shows want you to know, not how a scientist presents his work. 
Books are not papers. Papers are where you find academic work. 

The issue here is that you are mistaking 2nd hand sources as being the actual research. This couldn't be further from the truth. Scientists don't have egos. Editors and program schedulers have to think about ratings on the other hand. The best scientific show I can think of is Through the Wormhole as that tends to offer very rounded arguments with quick overviews by the actual scientists involved in the research. Nevertheless though, it's a far cry from the actual papers.