Podcast For Progress

Science Communication is one way academics can apply themselves outside of academia. But how does one transition between careers? I talked with Dr. Deboki Chakravarti, a biomedical engineer who worked on cancer treatments. She graduated in 2018 and then did an internship with Scientific American, a leading brand in Science Communication in the USA. First we learn a little bit about her scientific work, and her personal experiences in graduate school. Already during graduate school she began a YouTube channel about books and life as a graduate student. She then shares why she decided to leave academia, and she explains how she managed to find an internship with Scientific American. And finally, she explains what the internship looks like. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Using the Immune System to Fight Cancer Dr. Deboki Chakravarti worked on ways to increase the control practitioners have over so called "CAR t-cells". T-cells are immune cells that use receptor molecules to detect sp

At the end of November 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he had genetically modified human embryos which were then brought to term. The resulting twin sisters appear to be healthy. But this experiment was not greeted with enthusiasm by the scientific community. The critique attacks every aspect of the experiment: the treatment’s medical necessity, the reasoning behind the treatment approach, the way it was conducted, the ethical implications, and it also wasn’t legal. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! He Jiankui was aware that he was doing something the public and the scientific community would not agree with. In order to dampen the fall, He announced his experiments in a series of YouTube videos in which he also attempts an ethical justification. He addressed the public in this way before the scientific community could comment, to frame the following discussion in his favor. Possibly also to force Chinese authorities to act cautiously with the eyes of the world resting

I talked with Dr. Nuno Henrique Franco about animal welfare in scientific research. The questions we address are Why do we do animal experiments?What can be done to reduce the amount of animal experiments?What are the regulations for animal research?What do scientists think about the ethics of animal experimentation?What is being done for outreach? Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Nuno Franco is an expert on animal wellbeing in scientific research. He works as an assistant researcher at the “Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde” (Institute for Health Investigation and Innovation), or short i3S in Porto, Portugal. He worked on animal welfare, and animal ethics regulation, and he currently coordinates the national network of animal welfare bodies. Why do we do animal experiments? Animal research is mostly done in the context of health research. Researchers use animals instead of humans, because human experimentation at this level would be unethical. They also don’t make go

Once a month I sit down with my friend and co-host Bart Geurten. We talk about things within and around academia, and exchange opinions on earlier episodes. In this episode, we first talk about the concept of overlay journals in the context of the newly founded community based journal "Neurons, Behavior, Data Analysis, and Theory". NBDT is a journal for computational neuroscience, and it's community lead, completely free, open, and not for profit. We then talk about the role researchers should play in the dissemination of science to the public. This discussion has been on the internet for a while. In one of her recent youtube videos, the German science communicator Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim picked it up. She says, scientists should be forced to write summaries for a lay readership for every one of their articles. And in the main section we revisit my interview with Hélène Pidon on GMOs. We talk about the fears we think are behind the anti-GMO sentiments, and why the verdict of the EU court on gene modifica

While the number of PhD graduates per year is rising worldwide, the number of proper long-term or permanent positions in academia isn't. This leaves PhDs with ever decreasing chances of staying in academia. And it means that increasing numbers PhDs stay postdocs for a decade or longer, only to have to leave after all. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Amanda (center in the picture), Cleyde (left in picture), and Ian (right in picture) are three former life science postdocs who left academia between 2015 and 2017. When transitioning, they felt isolated from their peer groups who were predominantly academics. They found each other on Twitter seeking advice and got to talk about the challenges one faces when switching careers. So they decided to start the Recovering Academic podcast, which just entered its third season. There is a lot of information about how to write a resume and other more technical advise. The Recovering Academic podcast shares experiences with these practical issues. T

This episode is the first 'Q&A' episode, where my new co-host Dr. Bart Geurten (see episode 8) and I talk about what's new in academia. Our conversations are free form and may lead us astray here and there. We discuss the concept of 'merit' in the natural sciences. And we begin with a quick recap on episode 9, where I talked to Dr. Björn Brembs about the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). The JIF is a metric designed to measure the impact a journal had in the scientific community. There are many problems with how JIFs are generated. What is even worse is the misuse of this metric for estimating the scientific ability of a single author of one article published in a journal. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Bart tells us about how he himself took the news about how the JIF can be influenced by the journals, and the reactions of his colleagues. The omnipresent use of the JIF is guiding the decisions of our generation and it's not questioned enough. Björn Brembs had mentioned how the reviewers

Plant geneticists are not happy with the European judgement on gene editing Dr. Hélène Pidon is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research. She searches for genes that give plants resistance to diseases. She wants to use these genes to fortify cultivated Barley against these diseases, and thus reduce the amount of pesticides used to grow the plant. When the European Court of Justice ruled on the status of crops modified with gene editing methods like CRISPR, Hélène contacted me to talk with me about GMO crops. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Crops have been genetically modified for millennia I was curios about the origins of agriculture and how simple artificial selection of nice looking plants affected their genomes.For Millennia, farmers would choose a particular good looking plant to sow it's seeds in the next season. Unknowingly, they had a major impact on the whole genome of domesticated plants. For example, the size of the whe

Just some announcements this time In contrast to what was promised in the last podcast episode, we don't have a full question and answer episode this time. I hope this will not happen too often, in future. Dennis is a freelancer now. First thing is that I quit my postdoctoral fellowship to become a freelancer. You can see how I approach this on my website. Basically I want to offer my skills and expertise in scholarship and neuroscience to help people with their academic writing, be it papers or funding applications. This means that I am currently a bit low on finances, which makes financing Science for Progress more difficult, of course. More about how you can help me with that further down. Science for Progress News new volunteers for @sfprocurSusan Leemburg and Katharina Hennig are now helping me to find and curators, and manage the schedule. looking for a facebook page moderatorI have not given our facebook page the love it deserves. So I am looking for someone who would share relevant articles on th

What is the Journal Impact Factor? The Journal Impact Factor is widely used as a tool to evaluate studies, and researchers. It supposedly measures the quality of a journal by scoring how many citations an average article in this journal achieves. Committees making hiring and funding decisions use the 'JIF' as an approximation for the quality of the work a researcher has published, and in extension as an approximation for the capabilities of an applicant. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! JIF as a measure of researcher merit I find this practice already highly questionable. First of all, it appears the formula calculates a statistical mean. However, no article can receive less than 0 citations, while there is no upper limit to citations. Most articles - across all journal - receive only very few citations, and only a few may receive a lot of citations. This means we have a 'skewed distribution' when we plot how many papers received how many citations. The statistical mean, however

Science compensates for the shortcomings of human cognition. It allows us to apply methods of investigation that are independent of our own subjective notions and irrationality. As a result we have overcome common sense, traditional beliefs, and other misconceptions through thorough investigation. We even describe and utilize phenomena that are as incomprehensible as quantum mechanics, which defies our everyday experience in unimaginable ways. There is, however, a real struggle, here. Just like our brain perceives the non-existent 'Kanizsa's Triangle' (picture on the left), we make certain identifiable mistakes in cognitive thinking, too. This can really impact the way science is conducted and results are interpreted. Because of this it usually takes whole communities of scientists to work out and refine scientific theories. In this episode, I talk about heuristics and cognitive biases in science and society with neuroscientist Dr. Bart Geurten. Bart is no cognitive scientist. He works on motion vision and

Most academics won't stay in academia... or let's say, not every PhD will land a permanent position as a researcher. With the increasing numbers of PhDs this situation is becoming more serious. In this context, we want to interview people who work in so called 'alternative careers'. Some of these careers are still related to academia. We hope these interviews will be of interest to people in general, since they may learn something more about how academia works. For PhDs who may not stay researchers, it should be interesting to know what kinds of careers they can have beyond the ivory tower. In this first career episode, Cristina Oliveira explains her job as a 'funding adviser' - not to be mistaken with 'funding manager'. She works with the social science faculty at the New University of Lisbon (Universidad NOVA FCSH). She explains how she got into this job, and the tasks that her job entails. She needs to stay up to date with the available funding opportunities, network with funding providers and researche

This is the 2nd part of my conversation with Diana Barbosa from COMCEPT, the Portuguese Skeptics Community (find the 1st episode here). In the first part of the episode we got an overview over scientific skepticism and what kinds of topics they would usually discuss. In a nutshell, skeptics are fighting against non-scientific viewpoints making their ways into mainstream opinion. Now we talk a bit more in detail about creationism, nuclear power in the context of climate action, and alternative medicine: Religion in and of itself is not necessarily a scientific topic, because religion and science don’t deal with the same fundamental questions. Where religion focuses on spirituality, science tries to explore and understand the natural world. However there are instances where religious writings make statements about the natural world and this is where things become problematic. Creationism is the believe, that all life was created by one or the other deity. And we talk about creationists that believe that th

I had an extended conversation with Diana Barbosa (@diraquel on Twitter) from the skeptical society in Portugal, COMCEPT. This is the first of two parts to this episode where Diana Barbosa answers questions about what skepticism is, what skepticism is NOT, and how it is different from other, related movements. We get an overview of the goals and activities of COMCEPT meetings, and how to become a member! Being skeptical means to be doubtful. Scientific Skepticism, however, isn't simply doubtful of everything. The skeptic can be convinced by scientific evidence. Having started mainly as a movement to overcome superstition, such as the believe in the supernatural, modern skeptical societies deal with various forms of evidence denial in the public realm. COMCEPT addresses these topics in an educational way. They prefer informing the public over debating evidence denying individuals and groups. Diana and her colleagues founded COMCEPT six years ago and have grown to almost 30 members since. However, they have

Working on your PhD is a stressful phase, and the academic culture isn't making it better. In this episode I talk to Lauriane Nallet, who is a PhD student in Switzerland. She has a personal history with depression and even PTSD. Lauriane shares what she learned at a workshop on mental health issues in grad school, and also her own experience with mental health issues: symptoms to look out for, how she found help, and what therapy could do for her. We also talk about some aspects of academia that contribute to the stress, including high expectations for work load and 'passion', and the 'publish or perish' culture. Visit Lauriane's blog! clarifying comment We mention an article claiming a 6x increased prevalence of depression in graduate students. The article is being criticized for methodological confines. However, another study which was conducted using methods with fewer confines, still finds a 2.8x higher prevalence for depression in PhD students when compared to highly educated workers.

I interviewed Diana Barbosa about COMCEPT, a Portuguese skeptics community. Diana told me about events they will be at over the next two weeks. However, the full episode is scheduled for June 1st. So I cut together a brief intro into COMCEPT and promo for two events! For Saturday afternoon, May 5th, COMCEPT is invited to talk about their book 'Não Se Deixe Enganar' (Don't fool yourself), a guide to skepticism, as well as other books and science communication at the livraria barata. On May 12th, COMCEPT will have their monthly meeting. These meetings alternate between Lisbon and Porto. Diana was excited to announce that their guest this month, in Porto, will be João Júlio Cerqueira, the creator of the SciMed blog about scientifically supported medicine.

Guest Host: Hugo Bettencourt "We face a dilemma in conveying the scientific process to the public, and even within academia: Real science doesn't fit the elements of effective storytelling." Dennis had been vocal on topics surrounding academia, science and pseudoscience on social media for several years. Thus, he readily volunteered to co-organize the March for Science in Lisbon, in 2017. He wants to disseminate the understanding of science, humanities and academia by the public, but also systemic changes within academia. In the first part of this episode he explains how he decided to found Science for Progress, and what our current goals are. The second part is about the image of scientists in the public. In Dennis' opinion, story telling in scientific reporting, science journalism, but also in pop culture, creates a distorted image of scientists. The dilemma is that good story telling that consumers enjoy, does not fit the reality of scientific research. background Dennis is a neuroscientist from Ger

"The population says, 'this external funding lowers the trust in science!' " - Tanja Gabriele Baudson "I think our task as citizens and as people interested in science, and in truth, and in freedom, [is] to prevent that something like what happened in the United States is going to happen in Germany aswell." - Claus Martin Mark the date! The March for Science 2018 is on April 14th! Last year, the March for Science in Germany was the largest (in terms of number of marches) outside the USA. Dr. Tanja Gabriele Baudson, giftedness researcher and visiting professor at the University of Luxemburg, and Claus Martin, a director and composer from Mühlheim, brought local organizer teams together, and coordinated them! In our first external interview, the two describe how they decided to take the initiative. We also cover what they identified as the issue underlying the spread of anti-science sentiments in Germany: a lack of trust in science in the population due to the influence of third party funding. And finally we

"people should learn scientific knowledge to be able to discuss important topics and use science for good" Our guest is Gabriella Ferreira, a masters student in Science Philosophy. She talks about her studies of Science Philosophy, and volunteer work at the Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência. She worked on a collection of animals. The same in which Luís Ceríaco found a previously undescribed species. Gabriella showcases the importance of historical collections for current research efforts. Work done in natural history museums can be applied to conservation purposes, and to study the evolution of species. She further talks about the history of science. Some of the questions posed by ancient natural philosophers are still studied, today, using modern science. We also talked a bit about modern bio-ethical problems. background Gabriella spend her childhood in Paris, before she moved to the countryside in Portugal. The change in environment got her interested in gardening, farming and nature. Afte

In 2017, Hugo Bettencourt was finalist of the Portuguese section of the science communication competition ‘FameLab’, and appeared at the Noite Europeia dos Investigadores 2017. Here, he talks about this experience. FameLab is an international science communication competition initiated by the British Council. Hugo explains the application process, and what is expected from the presentations. He also shares some of what he learned in the special science communication workshop for finalists. At the end he had a great experience and made some friends. And it even got him some additional gigs as a science communicator. background Born and raised in Lisbon, Hugo Bettencourt studies biomedical engineering. Currently he is working on his MSc thesis in neuroscience at the Champalimaud Foundation. It is very important to him to participate in the complete scientific process. Too often, he says, engineers in science only get to do data analysis. He is not yet clear about his career goals. But he already knows sci