What makes a good scientific discussion?

After our first session on how to do a scientific presentation, covering the dos and don’ts, we now want to put it into practice. We have our common group meeting with the Kohler MitoLab. Both of us, when starting the lab, were so excited about scientific discussions – we used to discuss science all the time and were looking forward to bringing in complementary expertise from our group members to boost the projects.

It's much easier to notice mistakes in others' presentations than in our own—our blind spots make self-evaluation harder. That's why, during our scientific talk group meetings, we developed a checklist to help presenters critically assess their own work. The checklist includes key points such as clearly stating your hypothesis before presenting results, explaining all figures thoroughly, tying conclusions back to your hypothesis, and delivering a clear take-home message. It's designed as a tool for self-reflection and improvement.I would be

We are also working on the other side – I want to have my team become great scientists who are critical and eager to think deeply into a project. First of all, we made sure that we have a safe space. We also encourage our bachelor students to ask if they did not completely understand something – our more senior members are already and will do practical supervision, so clear explanations are an important skill. That’s a win-win situation!

We also need to emphasize that a critique on the project is not a critique on the person – we rather help if we see limitations and tell them early on. Otherwise, some years later, reviewers might ask the same. More critical people help us avoid blind spots. However, it is sometimes difficult to know what you could ask. Especially for our younger team members, we are trying something new. We developed a sheet with guiding questions – suggestions that they can think about and try to find in the presentation. Examples are: which method did I find especially interesting or clever? Is there a graph or table I’d ask for more detail on? What question would I ask to link it to my own interests or other topics?

I am convinced that critical scientific thinking is a skill that can be learned, and we are here for that. With this, we hope to get all our team members more into the scientific thinking world.

Would be interested to hear – how do you get scientific discussions going in the group meeting? And how do you help your team members to think more critically?