[Mitarbeiter.zoologie] Do boring speakers really talk for longer?

[Eckart Stolle]

I had the feeling ... now there is evidence!

"Boring talks that seem interminable actually do go on for longer."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06817-z




The whole correspondence article from Nature:

Dull talks at conferences can feel interminable. Or could it be that
they really do go on for longer?

I investigated this idea at a meeting where speakers were given
12-minute slots. I sat in on 50 talks for which I recorded the start and
end time. I decided whether the talk was boring after 4 minutes, long
before it became apparent whether the speaker would run overtime. The 34
interesting talks lasted, on average, a punctual 11 minutes and 42
seconds. The 16 boring ones dragged on for 13 minutes and 12 seconds
(thereby wasting a statistically significant 1.5 min; t-test, t = 2.91,
P = 0.007). For every 70 seconds that a speaker droned on, the odds that
their talk had been boring doubled. For the audience, this is exciting
news. Boring talks that seem interminable actually do go on for longer.

To avoid banality, speakers should introduce their objectives early on
and focus on pertinent information. They should avoid trite
explanations, repetition, getting bogged down by irrelevant minutiae and
passing off common knowledge as fresh insight.

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Dr. Eckart Stolle
Institut für Biology
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Hoher Weg 8, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany
eckart.stolle at zoologie.uni-halle.de
0049 345 55 26502
Fax 0049 345 55 27428
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