Many chairs at academic meetings remind the speakers to stick to time, and it is now commonplace to hear a warning alarm as the presentation should be nearing its end. Despite this some people run over time. Theoretically, this observation should be evenly distributed among junior and senior speakers, although anecdotally this does not appear to be the case. The objective of this study was to determine the proportion of speakers who overran their allotted time, by grade of speaker.

All individuals giving an oral presentation at the …