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This article
appeared in the Spring 2003 edition of Short
Words, the newsletter of Tim Albert Training.
It was written by Tim Albert.
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PowerPoint
'could take over from scientific papers'
An article in the Christmas BMJ
raises this issue
[Papyrus to
PowerPoint, RE Laporte et al, BMJ, 325, pp
1478-81]
PowerPoint could replace journal articles as the main
instrument of scientific communication.
The prospect is raised in the Christmas issue of the
BMJ by a group working at the University of
Pittsburgh. They argued in 1995 that paper journals were on
the way out.
Now they write: 'We propose that the metamorphosis has
furtively begun from a surprising and unrecognised
direction… a juggernaut called PowerPoint.'
They point out that PowerPoint is on 250 million computers
worldwide and that every day 30 million PowerPoint
presentations are produced. Four million PowerPoint lectures
are already available on the web and the number is
increasing logarithmically.
They list among the advantages:
- easier to learn,
- leaner, more efficient,
- much faster at dissemination.
As for peer review, they argue that there are a number of
alternative quality control models used in engineering that
need testing on biomedicine. They could be appropriate.
'The birth of the automobile brought the billion dollar
horse and carriage industry to its knees in five years.
Similarly, CDs ousted records from circulation,' write the
authors.
'Few 300 year old technologies are still operating in
science. A major problem has been the surprising lack of
scientific evaluation by scientists. This needs to change.
It is time for evidence base scientific communications'.
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