Why isn't Edward Tufte here?

Prevention Action has invited me to the SPR conference in San Francisco, my first trip out of the office since the Society for Child Development Research meeting in Boston in 2007.

The first few sessions make me wonder if I am getting out too much.

The quality of the science and thinking about application to policy and practice is excellent. But nobody seems to know how to present.

People who know more about math -about multi-level modeling, effect sizes, structural equation modeling- than I would ever want to know do not seem to comprehend that 60 slides into a 20 minute slot do not fit.

I'm starting a campaign, doomed to failure, to have Edward Tufte give the opening address at the next SPR meeting. Maybe all presenters at all conferences should be taken to labor camps for compulsory training a month or so before they prepare what they are going to say.

Tufte, po