Imagine you are sitting in an academic conference, listening to presentations by scholars from a field for which you have little background knowledge. Among the audience they are members who are from the same field as the presenters, and they listen intently to the presentations. Because they were able to comprehend the contents so thoroughly, at the Q&A session, they ask extremely detailed questions about the research presented, and a highly technical conversation between the presenter and the inquirer follows. You, people from other fields, neither understood the presentations nor the questions.
You basically sit there, wondering why you are attending the conference in the first place. Unfortunately, in the academic world, such situations are not ludicrous, nor are they particularly rare. In the name of academic exchanges across disciplines, people with highly specific and technical research topics are thrusted into the midst of intellectually unprepared audience, expected to summarize years of PhD-level research into ten-minute presentations. The result is presenters too engrossed with the details of their work while skipping the basics and an audience confused from the very start.
It is of course ridiculous to expect PhD-level research to be understood by audience who do not know the very basics of the field. And it is even more ridiculous to sit the clueless audience through hours and hours of such presentations in the name of academic exchange, with the flimsy assumption that somehow, people will grow academically from the few hours of practically listening to gibberish. In order to people to really learn something from such interdisciplinary academic exchanges, the ways information is presented needs to change, in ways that really facilitate understanding.
The first step to decrease the ambitions of the presenters. Considering that most of the audience who sit through such cross-field exchanges are not from the same academic backgrounds as the presenters, presenters should not present as if they are defending their research in front of knowledgeable scholars in conferences of their respective fields. They should not go deep into the minute, technical details of their researches, about which no one but those who studied the relevant subfields for years can remotely have to opportunity to comprehend.
Instead, the purpose of presentation should be draw interest of the laymen, presenting why and how one comes to become interested in such obscure, technical matters as a comprehensive academic pursuit. Ater all, the greatest relevance of a particularly technical research to a person without the background is not the process and results, but the motivations and purposes for conducting the research in the first place. Only by understanding how the research help people in a highly practical manner can people be truly interested in the topic and dig more into the technical details at a later time.
It is a misfortune that most presenters are not on the same page as the audience. Instead of persuading and convincing the layman audience of the importance of their research as something worthy of undertaking, they simply skip to the part about how the research found some worthwhile results, with the full assumption that people care about those results. But people do not even see the reason why a certain piece of research is conducted in the first place, then they would really not care about any results from the research, no matter how convincing and groundbreaking those results might be.
Ultimately, the tendency for academics to assume that people care about the details of their research speaks to a mindset of self-importance that is completely disconnected with reality. Academics assume that the work that they devote their lives and careers too are fundamentally something that will make the world a better place, and thus important to every person without need for explicit explanation. It is the source of divide between academics and non-academics that lead to frustration in the former and skepticism in the latter. It makes support for research among the general public all the more difficult to acquire.
The solution is just to have the academics take a big step back from their enthusiasm for their respective researches. They need to first connect with people who have no idea about the very basics of their field, and work on communicating about why their fields are important. And before they succeed in getting interests of the laypeople, there is absolutely no point even explaining what they are researching on. Researchers need to get rid of any unexplainable sense of self-importance that lead to an automatic sense of entitlement that their work ought to be treated with the utmost honor and full understanding. Without work done first, such respect simply will not be given.
You basically sit there, wondering why you are attending the conference in the first place. Unfortunately, in the academic world, such situations are not ludicrous, nor are they particularly rare. In the name of academic exchanges across disciplines, people with highly specific and technical research topics are thrusted into the midst of intellectually unprepared audience, expected to summarize years of PhD-level research into ten-minute presentations. The result is presenters too engrossed with the details of their work while skipping the basics and an audience confused from the very start.
It is of course ridiculous to expect PhD-level research to be understood by audience who do not know the very basics of the field. And it is even more ridiculous to sit the clueless audience through hours and hours of such presentations in the name of academic exchange, with the flimsy assumption that somehow, people will grow academically from the few hours of practically listening to gibberish. In order to people to really learn something from such interdisciplinary academic exchanges, the ways information is presented needs to change, in ways that really facilitate understanding.
The first step to decrease the ambitions of the presenters. Considering that most of the audience who sit through such cross-field exchanges are not from the same academic backgrounds as the presenters, presenters should not present as if they are defending their research in front of knowledgeable scholars in conferences of their respective fields. They should not go deep into the minute, technical details of their researches, about which no one but those who studied the relevant subfields for years can remotely have to opportunity to comprehend.
Instead, the purpose of presentation should be draw interest of the laymen, presenting why and how one comes to become interested in such obscure, technical matters as a comprehensive academic pursuit. Ater all, the greatest relevance of a particularly technical research to a person without the background is not the process and results, but the motivations and purposes for conducting the research in the first place. Only by understanding how the research help people in a highly practical manner can people be truly interested in the topic and dig more into the technical details at a later time.
It is a misfortune that most presenters are not on the same page as the audience. Instead of persuading and convincing the layman audience of the importance of their research as something worthy of undertaking, they simply skip to the part about how the research found some worthwhile results, with the full assumption that people care about those results. But people do not even see the reason why a certain piece of research is conducted in the first place, then they would really not care about any results from the research, no matter how convincing and groundbreaking those results might be.
Ultimately, the tendency for academics to assume that people care about the details of their research speaks to a mindset of self-importance that is completely disconnected with reality. Academics assume that the work that they devote their lives and careers too are fundamentally something that will make the world a better place, and thus important to every person without need for explicit explanation. It is the source of divide between academics and non-academics that lead to frustration in the former and skepticism in the latter. It makes support for research among the general public all the more difficult to acquire.
The solution is just to have the academics take a big step back from their enthusiasm for their respective researches. They need to first connect with people who have no idea about the very basics of their field, and work on communicating about why their fields are important. And before they succeed in getting interests of the laypeople, there is absolutely no point even explaining what they are researching on. Researchers need to get rid of any unexplainable sense of self-importance that lead to an automatic sense of entitlement that their work ought to be treated with the utmost honor and full understanding. Without work done first, such respect simply will not be given.
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