Throughout our scientific careers we are continually judged by the way we present our ideas, methods and results. Although it is generally agreed that scientific work should be judged only on its scientific merits, we all know of excellent papers that were poorly presented at a national meeting, and further handicapped by unreadable slides that compromised some exciting ideas. Intuitively, it is almost trivial to assume that not only the content, but also the presentation governs the effect of our scientific work. However, it is far from easy to prove this notion.
In the world of marketing and advertising the package—the choice of graphics, colors, the right title and so forth—has long been recognized to be equally important as the product itself. Scientists, however, are more naive, hoping to be judged only by the quality of their science. If market rules apply also to scientists, then those who ignore them...
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