If a project is presented as a "work-in-progress" at a conference i.e. I'm can say what the objectives are but we haven't figured out how we are gong to achieve them yet. I've been using anticipated, proposed, possibilities include etc A LOT in this paper which consequently isn't very informative. My question is how much of a problem would it be if I said we may do something (i.e. solve the problem in a certain way) but we end up doing something totally different. I am very conscious of saying something which turns out to be untrue but my sups think the paper needs more detail which I just don't have yet. Please help - time is of the essence!!

I don't think it would be a problem to suggest a line of analysis which you might later abandon for very good reason.

I do, however, think it would be a problem if you don't have enough content in your presentation, and it is all up in the air. You need some meat, i.e. something of substance. I guess I'm siding with your supervisors here.

Thanks for replying Bilbo. I would love for there to be more meat in the paper too but at this stage it's just too late to produce what they are asking for. We wrote the abstract about 6 months ago speculating that we would have something at this stage but due to things taking longer than expected and being very time consuming (experimental work), we haven't really gotten going on the stage of the project which we had indicated that the paper would cover. So I am finding it difficult to flesh the paper out as the research required hasn't been performed.

Hey Ev! Well as long as you have some substance to your presentation then I don't think you should worry about it too much. I have just got back from quite a big conference in my field and loads of people presented something that wasn't at the stage that the abstract has suggested. There was one presentation where the topic was proposed, the presenter suggested how they might go about carrying the project out and then asked the audience for thoughts and feedback! My presentation differed from my abstract because when I wrote the abstract, the preliminary data suggested one thing, and by the time I did the presentation I had more data which suggested something different and basically changed the conclusion. And I wasn't the only one who did this- if you say something with the best of intentions and then end up changing your mind then I don't think it really matters- that's the nature of research and projects very rarely get carried out exactly as stipulated in the project proposal! Best of luck with it, KB

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Hi Ev,
As keenbean said, presenting your proposed idea might be a good chance to get feedback from researchers who have been down that track already.

Oh I definitely agree with the benefits of presenting a proposed idea. But don't hold back too much. I was talking to my husband about this (post doc) and he commented that if you hold too much back on the methodology or whatever, because you're concerned it might change, you may end up getting interrogated quite hard about this gap in the talk in the after-talk questions. Better to be provide some detail, up front, to add meat to the talk, and deflect questions like that.

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Hi Ev, I'd agree with the others, it's more of a problem to have a waffly talk with no meat then one where you are selecting a course of analysis which you may have to possibly change. I've been at conferences in my first year where I was full of all the wonderful things I was going to do, had selected a methodology and geared my presentation around that, and then presented 2 years later at the start of final year with a quite different project! It's just life and science that means your methods may have to change, but you just have to present on the best course of action for you at the time. If nothing else, it shoes you're not afraid to be bold, and you are tackling something that noones done before or at least not in the way you are doing it, so of course things may change in the future, that's the beauty of it all! Good luck!

Thanks everybody for your replies. I submitted the paper today outlining what the current methodology is but I stressed that it may be subject to further changes depending on the results from x,y and z. Bilbo I can certainly see your husbands point of view, hopefully I've written in enough detail so that won't be an issue but I do have another 6 weeks before the actual presentation to refine the methodology so if someone does decide to ask an awkward question I should be better equipped to deal with it at that stage.

I really do love this forum with so many knowledgeable people who are generous too. Please all have a sprout (sprout) I've voted everyone that I could as helpful users too (up)