Why Junior Researchers Fear Presenting at Conferences

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Most researchers will admit it: many conference talks are painful.

Too fast. Too detailed. Too many slides that look like a research paper fell into PowerPoint. You sit down, curious, and thirty seconds later, you are already trying not to lose the thread.

The tragic part: everyone knows this.

So why don’t we change it?

Because there’s an elephant in the conference hall: junior researchers are afraid of senior scientists.

It’s the kind of fear that whispers:

  • “If I stand out… I might be seen as arrogant.”
  • “If I simplify, they’ll think I don’t understand my own work.”
  • “If I don’t include everything, my supervisor will be disappointed.”
Picture by Gaël Kazaz at the Young EFFoST Conference 2024

The focus should be on the audience, not the supervisor

Many early-career researchers prepare their conference talk as if they’re presenting to a single person: their supervisor.

Then they arrive at the conference and face a very different reality:

The room is full of scientists unfamiliar with that specific sub-sub-field. They need some context, a clear question, and a reason to care about the topic.

This leads to a strange kind of conference theatre: everyone acts like they understand everything, while secretly feeling behind, overwhelmed, or slightly panicked.

Senior scientists do not want boring talks either

When we ask researchers what they prefer at conferences, the answer is almost always the same: clear, structured, engaging, and adapted to the audience.

Nobody says: “Please give me a monotone technical monologue with 14 unreadable graphs.”

So where does the myth come from?

Junior researchers copy senior researchers, who copied it from the generation before them. What looks like preference is often just culture.

And the brave ones?

Sometimes you find them: the people who do it differently.

They start with a triggering question. They explain the problem in human language. They show what the work could change in practice. Or they take one graph and guide the audience through it step by step.

They are not Barack Obama, and they do not need a world-changing theory.

They just understand that clear, engaging presentations create return: better feedback, more collaboration, and stronger support.

So… how do we fix this?

1) For junior researchers: aim for connection, not survival

Try this mental shift:

Your talk is not an exam.

You’re not there to demonstrate you know everything. You’re there to:

  • get feedback,
  • spark collaboration,
  • test your ideas.

A difficult question isn’t a failure. It’s a gift. It shows someone engaged enough to challenge you, and that’s where better research begins.

2) For senior scientists & supervisors: reward clarity, not complexity

If you’re in a position of authority, you shape the culture, often without realizing it.

What helps junior researchers most is surprisingly simple:

  • Praise clarity. Treat “simple” as a strength. And say it, out loud.
  • Ask: “What is that one message you want the audience to remember?”, instead of pushing to add more data on the slide.
  • Encourage a real goal: feedback, collaborators, fresh perspective, instead of just “presenting their research”.

A final thought

Scientific conferences are supposed to be where ideas meet people.

If we want better conferences, we don’t just need better slides. We need a culture where clarity is respected, and where junior researchers don’t feel they must hide behind complexity to be taken seriously.

Because science can change the world, but only if it connects minds.
And clarity is what makes that connection possible.