I’ve done it. Usually, though, it’s done to illustrate, for instance, normal morphology, for contrast with your experimental results. Or as a key for the anatomy. Or even sometimes as a small, tasteful bit of decoration, as long as it doesn’t detract or distract from the data. In this poster, Use of yeast lysate in women with recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis by Vrzal et al., presented at the 8th Vaccine & ISV Congress in Philadelphia, I’m rather at a loss to figure out the purpose of these illustrations.
This is apparently a test of a commercial product, Candivac, used to treat yeast infections in women. I was puzzled by the results, too. They admitted 75 women into the study who’d had vulvovaginal inflammation 4 times in the past year, but weren’t experiencing any problems at the start of the trial…and then all of them got the treatment. There were no controls. I guess it was supposed to be a comparison with previous patient history, which was all presented in a couple of boring tables of numerical data.
I would have used the space to include some somewhat more informative diagrams to illustrate exactly what phenomenon I was summarizing, or perhaps illustrations of the actual procedure used, which probably didn’t involve putting the women in a bikini and sunglasses and asking them to smile for the camera.
But then I don’t have a marketing department that’s doing layouts for their advertising campaign.
What do those little fishy things you work with look like in a bikini?
Sexy!
Pictures of actual vulvovaginal candidiasis would likely have gotten more eyes on their poster as well.
ookay…
pix?
Vrzal et al. fail at science forever.
vulvovaginal candidiasis haz eyes?
eeewww
In 3… 2… 1…
my #4 was meant for PZ’s #2
but it works for Sili’s #3 too
.
.
.
probably NSW
@3 sili
I’ve seen posters like that. ICAAC conventions. There were no crowds. And definitely NSFW. Unless you’re an infectious disease specialist.
Well, who else ought to look at posters about candidiasis?
You are assuming the woman in the bikini isn’t one of the researchers. Bit sexist…
Joe Clarke, do you have a point? Women working as researchers normally work in their underwear?
Oh sure Lofty, all the time. I mean, who wouldn’t love working in a lab with all those dangerous chemicals half naked? Of course, we rarely put pictures of ourselves on our posters…
MadHatter,
Maybe it works body armour for hollywood and computergame women? One pair of designer goggles and some acid-resistant hotpants and you’re basically impervious.
Lofty said ‘Joe Clarke, do you have a point? Women working as researchers normally work in their underwear?’
No, no point.
(Should have used an emoticon to convey tongue-in-cheek joke remark.)
Mad Hatter @13
Half-naked dangerous chemicals?
Eeeek!
“experimental animal”
Tongue-in-cheek, humans are all animals etc.etc., but this kind of thing always makes me wonder: Is it ok to actually call people animals? Taking into account the way names and words associated with non-human animals are often used to dehumanise groups of people (“bitch”, “monkey”, “pig”, “cow”, “beast”).
I mean if someone calls me an animal, I can just shrug it off and if I refer to people as animals I mean it inclusively and biologically (to contradict the notion of humans as something special, magical, spiritual or ensouled).
Not to mention the product name is terrible… It’s obviously a portmanteau of “candida vacuum”, and let me just say: Ew. There’s just nothing appealing about that mental image.
Probably didn’t go to that much trouble since it’s much cheaper (in both senses of the word) to just pull pic’s from the aether.
Out of curiosity, since this isn’t one of my fields…
How common are these sort of “marketing campaign disguised as research study” presentations in the biomedical continuum? I mean, this would be completely out of left field in mathematics or literary theory, but those are both fields with very little commercial interest. Do conferences focused on biology and medicine have to deal with a constant onslaught of commercial advertising (with the requisite sexism, eurocentrism, etc.), or (maybe I’m being too optimistic here) is this poster an outlier?
jamessweet @ #17:
just guessing, but wouldn’t that be from “candida vaccine” … ?
@20 M can help you with that
In my experience, it’s pretty rare to have overtly commercial messages in posters and presentations at any of the major medical meetings. There are rules against such things that are pretty strictly enforced, especially in the US, Canada, Australia, and western Europe.
But there are always exceptions and things sometimes slide through. I remember the First?Second? International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam. One of the “scientific” posters at that meeting was a small box with Chinese writing on it — the box was taped to the poster board. The rest of the poster was a piece of paper that said — and I am quoting directly — “Try nice Chinese Herbal remedy. Work Every time”.
Those were the days when quite literally every abstract submitted was accepted…politics had a lot to do with it. These days … not so much.
I just looked at the conference program … and the meeting seems to be a wholly owned project of Elsevier, a medical publishing company. There doesn’t seem to be any involvement from any independent medical association (like IDSA, ICAAC, etc.)
It’s a “pay to play” conference. You have to pay to submit your abstract, AND you must register for the meeting in order for your abstract to be included in the program book.
In other words, this is just a money-making scheme from Elsevier. If there is any “real” science coming out of this meeting, it’s purely unintentional.
In theory, yes. In practice, be careful. If you’re an MRA, then it get’s you upvotes.
I wonder what the orchid Phalaenopsis, featured prominently at the top of the poster, has to do with this study?
Apropos of Joe Clarke’s idea of putting pictures of the researchers wearing bikinis on the poster, the thought of seeing poopyhead in a bikini is, ah, alarming… rather scary, especially if you’re one of the zebra fishies who has to pose with him. And it might attract Japanese whalers?