Podcast For Progress

After an unforgivable delay this episode is finally out. We had some personal and technical delays. Sorry about that. Anyways, in this episode Bart and I continue a conversation about the Energiewende. Based on the latest episode we spoke about which solutions we think should work well. The big problem seem to be the “Not In My BackYard” stance of many people who live where the new infrastructure need to be built. Since Brexit was supposed to happen, we also talk about Brexit, and how it is hurting science in the UK. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Energiewende To my surprise, Bart informed me that there are scientists who argue for a hydrogen based personal transport system. I am surprised, because we have hydrogen is so much more expensive. So, we go back and forth with a couple of arguments about practicability of different solutions. After that we talk about the problems building the infrastructure. Many citizens protest the construction of wind turbines and transmission

This summer climate change has finally made it back into public discussion in Germany. In the last episode on climate change, Rüdiger Eichel and I spoke about Fridays for Future and how the results of the election for the European Parliament reflected the increased awareness for environmental topics in the EU. In this episode I talk to Tom Brown from the Karlsruhe Insttitute of Technology. He models how we can use different energy distribution systems to balance the fluctuating power production from renewable sources. There are many variables and options to consider. But the good news is that a carbon neutral economy in Germany should be possible. We focus on Germany, because it's Europe’s biggest economy. It is highly industrialized, and still very much reliant on fossil fuels for power production. And on top of transitioning away from fossil fuels, Germany is also fading out nuclear power as well. So, if Germany can manage a transition to a carbon neutral economy, every country should be able to

The main topic for this episode is Why Academia Fails… or better, what we may learn from the book “Why Nations Fail” (Acemoglu & Robinson) about the shortcomings of academia. But before we get to it, we will talk briefly about what happened over the last month - most importantly, I will give you my report on the Global Climate Strike as I experienced it in Lisbon, on September 27th.This episode is special, in the sense that we decided to make it a 2-Part episode. In this first part we basically set up the background information, and in the November talk episode, we will have a proper, structured discussion. And you have the chance to contribute! If you have read the book “How Nations Fail”, or are for other reasons familiar with the concepts of extracting and inclusive institutions, give us your feedback on how this could be applied to academia! Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! As always, the episode begins with some small talk. Dennis - and thus Science for Progress - moved from Por

In this episode I talk with Dr. Chinmaya Sadangi about his Science Communication Project "The Addictive Brain". Science Communication is of major importance. This becomes increasingly clear as we are witnessing the climate action demonstrations which are still being met with rather disappointing responses from the governments. Because of this, I regularly feature science communicators on this podcast. The goal is to inform academics about the possibilities of contributing to science communication. This can be done either in parallel to their academic careers, or as a career choice. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! The Addictive Brain is a community-based science communication project, as Chinmaya invites another science communicator to contribute on a regular basis. He is very passionate to represent women and men, both, as well as scientists from all over the world and at any career stage. Although a wide variety of contributions are accepted, the core activities of The Addictive

Photo by Miriam Berger and Bart Geurten We are back from the summer break! So, we resume the “Bart and Dennis” Talk format! Bart and I briefly talk about Bart’s research, because he just published an article! And it appeared in a journal that is actually quite good, but it is pay-walled and published by Elsevier. We then talk about the upcoming Open Science mandate that cOAlition S is trying to establish in Europe. cOAlition S includes some of the biggest funding agencies in Europe, like the Wellcome Trust and the European Research Council. Yet, a lot of scientists seem to still be blissfully unaware. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Just as a lot of German researchers don’t seem to care a lot about their universities cancelling subscriptions to Elsevier. The publishing company had a survey done on affected German researchers and… well … I don’t think the outcome really reflects the message Elsevier would have liked. And in the end we have a brief news item that may be a re

That sexual harassment, bullying, but also academic misconduct such as advisers plagiarizing their student’s work, happen in academia has never been a big secret. Rumors and scandals over the mistreatment of students, grad students, postdocs, and so on, have been accompanying my whole career. So called ‘whisper networks’ warn each other to stay away from certain professors. And, where power differentials between members of a community are so large, abuse of power is probably not completely preventable. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! However, many cases may indeed be preventable, and so may be many of the negative effects on everybody involved in such a scandal. A common theme in such cases across time and space appear to be that the officials at institutions are doing a really bad job at handling it.  For this episode, my guest Alice Hertzog and I spoke about the typical mistakes made in treating cases of abuse of power on the side of the institution investigating the allegations

Open science for some people it is just science done correctly. For others it is the revolutionary change in the whole academic culture. These different perspectives are highly dependent on your views on the role of science in society, who your advisers were which fields your were in, which career stages you reached, and where you live and work. In this episode I talk with Dr. Jon Tennant about open science. He is a paleontologist who is now predominantly active in building an Open Science community. He has published several articles on open science and initiated the Open Science MOOC, among many other activities. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Resources: Jon Tennant on Twitter The Open Science MOOC origin story “What Collaboration Means to Us: We are more powerful when we work together as a community to solve problems” Open Science MOOC Open Science MOOC Slack Community Welcome to the world of Open Science Open Source: The definition and the Four Freedoms

Pseudoscience is like a thorn in my brain. Besides being potentially dangerous when people rely on “alternative” “medicine” instead of finding actual help, sometimes it just bothers me when somebody is wrong on the internet. So it was time to relax a bit about it. For this episode Bart and I tried something new. On Sunday, July 7th, we went on YouTube and played a game! We read pseudoscience stories to each other, trying to make the other guy laugh about it! And among the people who sent us their pseudoscience stories, we randomly chose a winner who got a t-shirt from our merchandize store! Besides the edited podcast episode, you can also watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UilksPkhlMU Please let us know what you think! Congratulations to Robert Kossen, who won a t-shirt from our merchandize store!

For this episode I speak with Dr. Rüdiger Eichel, professor for Materials and Processes for Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage at the RWTH Aachen University, and Scientific Director for the Institute for Energy and Climate Research at the Research Center Jülich in Germany. Dr. Eichel gives us an insight into the chances and challenges of the Energiewende. The new found interest in climate issues in the public that can be seen in the Fridays for Future movement and the outcomes of the EU parliament elections, make him optimistic. He now sees the chance to talk with society about the technical possibilities to switch to fully renewable energy sources, how long it might take to implement, and how much it might cost financially and in terms of living quality. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Energiewende is not Enough Many of you may have heard the name of the project to transition the German energy sector “Energiewende” - a name that connotes the energy transition with

Once a month Bart Geurten and I talk about current topics in the Bart and Dennis (“B&D”) series. This time we talk about the success of the Greens in the EU parliament elections, homeopathy, and postdocs. Announcement And we have a big announcement: On July 7th we will do a live episode on YouTube! For the show we want to play a little game. And for this to work, we need you cooperation! Send us your weirdest/funniest parascience or pseudoscience stories or soundbites! You can support either Bart or Dennis by sending your story to bart@scienceforprorgess.eu, or dennis@scienceforprogress.eu, respectively. We will randomly select a winner from all entries, who will get a free t-shirt form our merchandise store! Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! The Greens In the recent EU parliament elections, Bart voted for the Green party. And overall, the Greens have gained a lot of seats. This is mostly because of the increased awareness for climate action in the population. But are the

Postdocs are, besides graduate students, the main workforce in academic research. Following the PhD, the postdoc position is the only way to follow a research career within academia. Many PhDs around the world are advised to go to the USA for a postdoc - or two - because it is known for its large research output and high quality research institutes. Around two thirds of postdocs in the USA are foreign born. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! In this episode I talk to Gary McDowell, a UK born scientists in protein research who over the last few years worked with “Future of Research” to investigate the conditions postdocs in the USA are facing. The situations appears to be far from optimal. And this doesn’t just hurt the postdocs and their families, it also impacts research productivity. The goals of Future of Research are to enable PhDs to make better career decisions about whether a postdoc is a good decision, and if so how to choose the right place to apply to. Another fundamental pro

In March, Bart visited the bi-annual meeting of the German Neuroscience Society (NWG) in Göttingen. And he took his brand new digital audio recorder with him! So this is the first time we can present impressions from the field! Bart interviewed professor Karin Nordström, graduate student Robert Kossen, and a former researcher and now entrepreneur John Stowers about what brings them to the conference, and when and why students should begin attending. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Taking it a step further, we also highlight two conferences, the Neuroscience Doctoral Student's Workshop (NeuroDoWo), which is completely organized by graduate students, and the Women's Career Network (WoCaNet), where graduate students also took the organizational leadership. Bart participated at WoCaNet and he managed to interview the three organizers, Luisa Hallmaier-Wacker, Priya Gurumoorthy, and Liubov Zakharova, too! We also got Robert Kossen to talk us through his conference poster. To give y

In May will be the next Pint of Science event! Pint of Science is an annual festival that was founded by Michael Motskin and Praveen Paul. Every May scientists present their research to a public audience in a pub or a bar. It started in the UK in 2014, and it’s now spread throughout the world, with official events in 24 countries. In 2018, 120 000 people visited Pint of Science events. The events are planned by local teams, which make up the 3000 volunteers. In this episode I spoke with Pint of Science organizer Elodie Chabrol, a former neuroscience researcher, who is now a full-time science communicator. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Already during her days as a researcher, Elodie tried to explain her work to colleagues, friends and family, which made her conscious about how to communicate effectively. As a professional freelance science communicator she wants to encourage scientists to share their stories, and to demonstrate that scientists are approachable. She loves it, whe

Bart and I invited three scientists from both sides of the canal to talk about Brexit and how it impacts scientists and the scientific endeavor. Our guests are Andrew Phillipides (British citizen, and professor at Sussex University, UK), Thomas Nowotny (German citizen, and professor at Sussex University, UK), and Clare Hancock (British citizen, and PhD student at Göttingen University, Germany). Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! The goal of the EU is to promote peace, freedom, security and justice, sustainable development, social inclusion, cohesion and solidarity among member states, to respect cultural diversity, to establish an economic and monetary union (EUR). And most important for this podcast, the European Union coordinates efforts to further scientific and technological progress across Europe. The EU runs a research programmes that is renewed every 7 years. For the current one, Horizon 2020, the EU spent nearly €80 billion that are provided by the member states. And this money

Arnold Schwarzenegger famously (and half-jokingly) proclaimed that if you need more than 6 hours of sleep, you should sleep faster. Many successful people claim to sleep very little and use the extra time to be productive. But is this sound advise? I talked with Dr. Lars Dittrich, neuroscientist and former sleep researcher, about sleep. Lars answer questions like What does sleep do? How is it regulated? What are the side-effects of acute and chronic sleep deprivation? How do I know if I sleep enough? How could sleep research inform policies and business practices? Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Summary Sleep deprivation, even only short-term, has significant effects on your cognitive abilities. Just a single night of lost sleep has the same effects as the amount of alcohol that would make driving illegal. This tiredness is believed to be a mechanism that dials down the activity of the brain to reduce the accumulation of metabolites that may damage the brain. During sleep

In this episode we talk about our experience with peer review and the importance of kindness and the advantages and disadvantages of the authors knowing the identity of peer reviewers. And in the second part we talk about how twitter can be a great place for science and scientists! Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Peer Review Peer review can be a pretty tense process. We talk about how misunderstandings can lead to very negative reviews, and how authors a prone to take critique personally. As a reviewer Bart suggests to use the "shit sandwich" approach, where you "sandwich" bad news between positive remarks. In addition we both feel that it is better to always give authors the benefit of the doubt. So we would clearly point out parts in the text that appear unclear, or ambiguous. This gives the authors the chance to clarify possibly crucial misunderstandings. Bart further explains why he prefers to let the authors know that it is him who wrote the review, if the journal provides thi

Who gets positions and funding in academia should depend on the merit of the researcher, project, or institute. But how do we assess these merits fairly, meaningfully and in a way that makes it comparable? I talked about metrics with Steffen Lemke, PhD student at the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW), in Kiel, Germany. He is part of the *metrics project, which investigates new research metrics and their applicability. The project is funded by the German Researcher Association, DFG. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Citation Based Metrics In episode 9 I talked with Björn Brembs about the most prevalent metric used: the Journal Impact Factor. It turns out that the “JIF” is not a good metric. Another commonly used metric is the “H-index”. Like JIF it is based on citations - the number of times a scientific paper was mentioned in another scientific paper. But it aims to measure the output of a researcher rather than the journal. Both, H-index and JIF, have their own

This episode of Bart and Dennis Talk is actually our first anniversary episode! While Science for Progress was founded in July 2017, the podcast went online on February 20th 2018! Announcement At the beginning of the episode I announce that I will be on the Twitter “rotating curation account” @RecovingAcad, which belongs to the Recovering Academic Podcast. We had a crossover episode with them, last November. I will be tweeting about leaving academia and transitioning into industry from February 25th to March 2nd. On March 3rd I will do a live video AMA on the account @theaddictivebrain on Instagram. Addictive Brain is a science communication project that was initiated by Chinmaya Sadangi, who was curator on our twitter rotating curation account @sfprocur. My AMA on Instagram starts at 3 p.m. UTC and will take about an hour. Anniversary! At this time we have had 20 episodes, 10 of which were from the phase when I did an episode every three weeks. But since we started doing the B&D episodes,

Academics are Spoiled. Right? The stereotype of academics is that they live a well protected life in the ivory tower. But this is not the case for most of them. Maria Pinto from Portugal is a PhD student in marine microbiology in Austria. With the final stages of her work approaching, Maria is beginning to think about the future. Forgoing Salaries, Benefits, and Life Planning Security in your Late 20s to 40s. We talk about the many uncertainties in academia, particularly for early career researchers. In general the salaries are not good, but in poorer countries, where the salaries are particularly low and may not even include social security, there is also an expectation of students to pay field work trips themselves. In general, traveling in order to present your work at conferences is important to researchers and their careers, but for many, this is not affordable. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! PhD students and postdocs are in the typical age for founding families. The acade

In the light of the latest animal use numbers in Germany (2017), Bart and I are having a conversation about animal use in fundamental research. We then move on to talk about a new statistical method that might help researchers get some of their data out of their drawers and into an article! Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Animal Use in Germany 2017 Numbers in short (as presented by tagesschau.de): Total: > 2 Million1.37 Million Mice255.000 rats240.000 fish3300 dogs718 cats3472 monkeys50% for fundamental research27% drug production and testing15% for disease research740.000 animals were killed for organ examination Bart and I regularly discuss the merit of animal research on social media, and we also had a podcast episode on animal wellfare in science. Our conversation mostly is about fundamental scientific research - which is what we do. We talk about how scientists don't prefer animal experiments, if there are better ways to answer the research question. But we also mention