Communicating = telling a compelling story

1. Communicating = telling a compelling story • Sometimes to an overwhelmed, overworked, uninvested audience  understand and pitch to your audience • Writing • Abstracts • Papers • Grants • Talks • Abstracts • Invited presentations • A job talk

2. The KISS convention

3. Not that KISS convention Keep It Simple, Stupid

4. Abstracts and papers • Keep on message: what are you asking, how did you address it, what happened when you did what you said you would do, what do you conclude • You do not need or want to review the entire world literature • Writing an abstract: analogies to crossword puzzles. • Abstracts: • Avoid too many abbreviations; if you must abbreviate, avoid abbreviations in the conclusions. • State a specific conclusion.

5. Presentations/job talk • Know the audience. • Start where they are comfortable: a clinical vignette, a simple cartoon… • Make the broad question you are addressing clear at the beginning, and throughout (e.g. repeat slides/flow diagram) • Leave the last bit for future tense, exciting new data …Where are you going, why is it important, you can do it.

7. Rule #1

9. A high junk:data ratio

10. Better

12. Another example of chart junk, in my opinion

13. The PowerPoint default

14. The PowerPoint default minus the chart junk

15. Patterns and red don’t work on a blue background

17. How much data is there anyway?

18. How much data is are there anyway? North West East 7% of US males are color blind. Another reason to avoid red on blue quarter

19. stimulate 1 2 0 3 4 -90 mV Use the features of PowerPoint bath cell 0 mV amplifier records voltage difference between the tips of the two glass microelectrodes

20. bath cell stimulate 1 2 amplifier records voltage difference between the tips of the two glass microelectrodes 0 3 4 -90 mV Use the features of PowerPoint 0 mV

26. Grant-writing: scientific focus • State a specific over-arching hypothesis and Specific Aims that are testable and important • Stay away from the trivial • Balance between the do-able and the overly ambitious • Focus on the problem, not the method • Not: “we will use a newly-developed mouse to test this idea” but “we will test this idea. One approach is to use a newly-developed mouse…” • Pick an important problem = advice for your scientific life

27. Quiz #1 • Pretty good, huh? And not a single lesson….

28. Calypso receiving Telemachus and Mentor in the Grotto WILLIAM HAMILTON RA 1751 – 1801 MENTOR: in Greek mythology, friend of Odysseus and tutor of Telemachus. On several occasions in the Odyssey, Athena assumes Mentor’s form to give advice to Telemachus or Odysseus. His name is proverbial for a faithful and wise adviser. Mentoring There is no one who does not need a mentor Don’t re-invent the wheel – it’s been done before

29. What goes into a grant? • The science: • Specific aims • Background and significance • Preliminary data • Methods • Other stuff that might influence a score: • The investigator • The environment • Stuff that doesn’t usually influence a score: • The budget

30. Some grant writing do’s and don’ts • Reviewers are not infinitely patient. • Make your case on page 1 • Make it clearly • Make it legibly • Spell-check • Learn to like to write • Finish the first draft weeksahead of time • Time for you to re-review (pretend you didn’t write it) • Time for your mentor and other colleagues to review • Daily (at least!) backups

31. Grant writing do’s and don’ts By the time a reviewer gets to a description of what you propose to do, they should already be convinced that • the problem is important. • Don’t “characterize”, “describe”, etc. Rather, “test hypothesis”, “identify…”, “determine the role of…” • Avoid elevator science: A and C go up; B and D go down… • the experiments are do-able • you can do them • Writing the Specific Aims section (to be discussed)

32. Some other specifics • Background and significance: • Don’t review everything there is to know; review what is important to your proposal, introduce new methods. Self-citation is OK in moderation here. • Preliminary data: • They know what you want to do. Convince them you can do it. • As soon as you think you are going to write a grant, think about what preliminary data you will need. Don’t leave this for later… • Methods: • My preference: describe the experiments, pitfalls, interpretation that will address each Specific Aim; put the details in a separate section at the end.

33. Form issues • The Figure 1 Strategy • Fonts and figures • Every paragraph should have a header • Timetable: • At the end of the Methods section • Reviewers will pillory you for not presenting them • They are near-meaningless, in my opinion.

34. 5 sentences describe the preliminary data and the question to be addressed in Specific Aim 1

35. A header for each paragraph Same words for the Specific Aim. The details get increasingly clear as the reviewer reads on

37. KININOGEN KALLIKREIN BRADYKININ INACTIVE PEPTIDES t-PA ACE REGULATES VASCULAR FIBRINOLYTIC BALANCE ANGIOTENSINOGEN RENIN ANG I ACE ANG II PAI-1 ANG IV ALDOSTERONE EC VSMC

40. Inconceivable! • I don’t think that word means what you think it means

43. A picture is worth more than a thousand words… it’s worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars

44. A visual issue in graphics generation

45. A visual issue in graphics generation

46. I have a bad feeling about this

47. The review process • Imperfect • Usually impersonal • Participate on grant review committees if the opportunity arises • Find out who will review your grant. Cite them (moderately) in the text.

48. A bad attitude to the review process • Leave the gun; bring the cannoli

49. NIH Review Criteria • Significance • Approach • Innovation • Environment • Investigator • Importance of each component varies during career development

50. An unfunded grant is a re-submittable grant • Also, thanks to the miracles of modern word-processing, a written grant need not be submitted to only one funding agency. • You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability….