Science for Societal Progress

Jennifer Polk coaches PhDs ready to make a career change. It's the time of the year when many of us slow down and think about our career decisions. Are you happy with yours? Are you considering a change? I am, in fact, going to make a change in 2021. On this podcast, I talked about careers outside of academia a couple of times. This time I talk with Dr. Jennifer Polk from Toronto, Canada. She's a career coach for PhDs. I came across her Twitter account a while back and thought this would make a great episode. She describes how she helps PhDs to find out what they want from life and how to find a fitting job. If you'd like to get in touch with her, check her out: Jennifer Polk's website "From PhD to Life"On Twitter, Jennifer Polk is @FromPhDtoLifeFrom PhD to Life on FacebookFrom PhD to Life on LinkedIn Other episodes on careers for academics and in academia: 48 SciComm as Career Development Tool – Dmitry Kopelyanskiy39 From Cosy(?) Academia to Harsh(?) Industry! – with John Stowers27 Precarious Postdocs. A Future for Research? – with Gary McDowell25 SciComm: Pint of Science – with Elodie Chabrol19 Insecurity and Uncertainties for Early Career Academics – with Maria Pinto17 From PhD to SciComm via BookTube – with Deboki Chakravarti13 Is there Sunshine Outside the Ivory Tower? – The Recovering Academic Podcast#7: Funding Adviser: career at the Interface of Science – with Cristina Oliveira

Food production, transportation, and consumption habits have an immense impact on health, biodiversity, and the climate. Which food we eat influences our risks for metabolic and cardiovascular diseases; but also the use of land, water, fertilizers, and pesticides, Prices are the main driver for our decisions at the grocery store, but -  just as we discussed in the context of mobility and industry as a whole in earlier episodes - the true costs from damages done to the environment by unsustainable agricultural practices are hidden from the consumer. For this episode, I interviewed Dr. Gesa Maschkowski. She is a science journalist and editor in the field of nutrition and sustainable diet communication. For her PhD she looked into interventions to shift dietary habits in society. She found that the deficit model - merely informing citizens what would be beneficial practice - isn’t sufficient. Instead, intensive work was necessary to include citizens in the transformation process and guide them. This is how Finland was able to reduce diet-related health issues in its citizens. Speaking of dietary recommendations. The EAT-Lancet Commission published recommendations named the “Planetary Health Diet”. The diet is supposed to be healthy and at the same time its production sustainable. The change in diet for the average European would mainly be to exchange most of the animal products - meat, dairy, and eggs - with fruit, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and nuts.As an activist with Scientists for Future, Gesa participates in a project with the city of Bonn that will put what she learned about guiding transformations into practice. The inclusive approach was met with agreement by the city council and they are now setting up the structure for the project. And this project isn’t just about eating habits and agriculture, the whole city is supposed to become carbon-neutral within 15 years. This project could be a model project for transforming cities and cultures. Unfortunately, we can't wait to see how it works out. This opportunity has passed. We need action everywhere, immediately. Sources Transformation-Project "Bonn im Wandel"Scientists for FutureEAT-Lancet's Planetary Health DietInformation Deficit ModelBackcasting

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is the idea of bringing stakeholders to the table when we plan our research strategies. The EU-funded project "FIT4RRI" was tasked with finding out why aspects of RRI - such as citizen science projects or the adoption of open science - are applied only little by European research institutes and their researchers. Experiments were conducted to find out how research projects can implement RRI principles right from the beginning. Based on that knowledge they then proceeded to develop guidelines and recommendations for institutions to foster RRI. And finally, they developed an online training course for researchers and administrators to learn about Responsible Research & Innovation practices. Maxie Gottschling (University of Göttingen) and Helene Brinken (now at the Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology) were part of a German workgroup within the much larger project. In this conversation, they give us some insights into what FIT4RRI found out, and what can be done. https://youtu.be/MyTdNdujVko informational video by FIT4RRI Resources: Maxie Gottschling and Helene Brinken on @sfprocurThe FIT4RRI WebsiteRRI Toolkit on FOSTERSlides and Recordings of the final summit "RRI4REAL" (scroll to the bottom)

My guest in this episode is Dr. Maria-Elena Vorrath, a geologist who studies the history of climate change, who just finished her PhD. Besides her work as a researcher she is a science communicator with Scientists for Future. Her message is clear: we can't stop climate change, but we can slow the temperature rise. Every bit of reduction in carbon dioxide emissions saves lives down the line. And: A low-carbon society cannot rely on low-emission-technologies, only, but it also has to reduce it's overall consumption. We further talk about Elena's background and research, as well as her science communication for Scientists for Future. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! To investigate the climate for the last 17 000 years, Maria-Elena Vorrath took samples from the ocean floor at the coast of Antarctica - sediment cores to be precise. These cores reveal the layers of sedimentation. Each layer correlates with one year.She sampled the different layers and analysed how much of a specific protein they contained; a protein that was produced by algae that live at the bottom side of ice sheets. So, the amount of protein tells her about the amount of ice on the ocean in a given year. Elena began sharing her work with the public around the same time Greta Thunberg gained media attention in late 2018 and joined Scientists for Future shortly after. She gives talks about her work at Science Slams and other events and combines it with her dire warning message about the climate emergency. The entertaining jokes she leaves to the other contestants at the Science Slam. She feels that this is her duty as a climate investigator. Ressources Maria-Elena Vorrath on TwitterMaria-Elena's Science Slam talk on YouTube [GER]Maria-Elena's talk at the "Chaos Computer Club" on YouTube [GER] Maria-Elena Vorrath's profile at the Alfred-Wegner-InstituteReports by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)"Earth Hasn't Warmed this Fast for Tens of Millions of Years" (Scientific American)"Sea level rise from ice sheets track worst-case climate change scenario" (Science Direct)Carbon calculator: find out how much CO2 your flight will emit (The Guardian)

One of my favorite topics is artificial intelligence, or - more specifically - what we can learn from neuroscience about artificial intelligence. So, when I was gifted the book "Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" by Max Tegmark I enjoyed the read thoroughly. But, several scenarios envisioned in the book as paths to human-like artificial intelligence didn't make sense to me, as a neuroscientist. So a bestseller book on artificial intelligence completely ignored the views of neuroscience. This is why invited Dr. Grace Lindsay, host of the podcast "Unsupervised Thinking" about computational neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Grace is a postdoc at University College London, and she is currently writing a popular book about computational neuroscience. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Neuroscience inspired the technology that is currently leading the field in artificial intelligence: artificial neural networks (ANNs); now better known as 'deep networks' as in 'deep learning'. The inventors of ANNs were the first to implement the basic idea of distributing computations across a large number of small processing units - neurons. For decades this method suffered from it's need for large amounts of data and a lack of appropriate hardware. As soon as these prerequisites were met, ANNs really took off. Today, some people are thinking about how progress in neuroscience can further inform the structure of ANNs to improve on their performance - because they still are far behind what a brain can do. Referring to Tegmark's book we discuss scenarios that he writes are proposed to lead toward human-like artificial intelligence. We discuss whether modelling a human brain on different levels, from the molecules of every brain cell up to the behavior of an individual human, would work out - or would even count as intelligence. Could we upload our minds? Would human-level AI be conscious? Will the "singularity" kill us all? We try to answer these questions form the viewpoint of neuroscience. Resources: Grace Lindsay on TwitterGrace's upcoming Book “Models of the Mind“ Grace's Podcast “Unsupervised Thinking” Grace's Blog "Neurdiness"Max Tegmark “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” Mentioned Black Mirror episode: “Be Right Back”

My co-host Bart Geurten and I had a rather spontaneous conversation, again. We talk about remote teaching, how science communication and science journalism could be supported by the public, and speculate about how the political fringe might be missing a sense of belonging. Following a catch-up about our lives in the pandemic, we talk about taking lectures online. Should we do it? Are there circumstances when it makes sense? Or does it remove important social interactions among students? We then talk about science communication. There was a hearing in the German Bundestag about how the parliament could install a funding mechanism for science communication and science journalism. One of the issues is that journalism is under a lot of pressure to make profits. This, finally, led us to discuss - once more - the plight of populism. Does it provide people with a sense of belonging? Dennis risks his life and hearing to demonstrate the dangerous noise from wind-turbines: https://youtu.be/AOFR4XuClkM Academic Writing Videos by Dennis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgGJBLboYtc&list=PLjZptrQXtspB7c5rAvU_RItVzBqv1JvzE

 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. In this episode, I talk to Gary McDowell, a UK born scientist 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 situation appears to be far from optimal. And this doesn’t just hurt the postdocs and their families; it also impacts research productivity. The extended edition of our podcast appears on Patreon! 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 problem is the disconnect between the lived experience of junior academics and their senior supervisors.  At the same time, the data they collected unveil systemic problems with postdocs in the USA, and Future of Research is working to change academia for the better. Postdoc: Advertisement and Reality The postdoc, as advertised, is a sort of apprenticeship position where PhDs develop their independent research projects to become leading scientists heading their own labs. The reality is that postdocs have replaced staff researchers, working on their Principal Investigator’s project, and hardly ever being mentored or trained in leadership and management. Even training in essential day-to-day parts of the work as an academic scholar - like conducting peer review - doesn’t seem to be part of their experience. At the same time, postdocs are still being classified as “trainees” to justify not paying them their worth, and to deny them benefits such as proper health care. Salary Because postdocs are paid below their skill and experience levels, and most are not given the mentoring and training promised, they are exploited as cheap labor by the academic system. A few years ago, Obama tried to change a labor law, which would have affected that institutions would need to give postdocs a raise - or face the issue of having actually to keep track of postdoc working hours. Unfortunately, this change didn’t become active. On the bright side, most universities still implemented the raise - even though some universities were trying to take it back. So this was good news. Future of Research collected salary data from postdocs just after this happened (and continues to do so for a longitudinal study), and found a median income of about $47500. This number clearly could be related to the planned labor law adjustment. So this was a positive finding. However, we should not forget that taking all people with doctorates in the USA, median salaries range from $70 000 to $100 000. Even worse: a postdoc negatively affects income up to 15 years following graduation to a PhD. This seems to come as a surprise to many, including industry representatives. Benefits The USA are infamous for their inadequate health care and labor protection situation. Many PhDs from countries with socialized or mandated benefits, like in Europe, will be surprised that things like basic health care, vacation time of more than two weeks, and maternal protection (let alone parental leave), are not a given in America. And Universities often will take any excuse not to pay benefits.  Vice versa, Americans appear to be quite surprised that in the UK, for example, there is a training time mandate by funding providers. In the USA the PI has full control over a postdoc’s time. And not only are PIs allowed to keep their “trainees” from getting trained in workshops and elsewhere, but they also often simply don’t mentor them themselves,

For this episode, I spoke with  Dr. Jonathan Köhler who studies the transformation of the transportation and mobility sectors using computational models at Competence Centre Sustainability and Infrastructure Systems of Fraunhofer Institute. He discusses how ships and aircraft can become carbon neutral, and answers some common questions on the topic. He then talks about his experience with Scientists for Future and Fridays for Future. In the end, he gives us a vision of how mobility could look like in a climate-neutral city. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Resources: Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISIDr. Köhler on KIKA: "Fliegen - muss das sein?" [GER]More on synthetic fuels / Power to X: 29 Climate Action: Energiewende – with Rüdiger EichelScientists for Future (international)Scientists for Future (German-speaking countries)

For this episode, Bart and I had a rather spontaneous chat about conspiracy beliefs and science communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worldwide conspiracy myths about SARS-CoV-2 appear to be on the rise, and conspiracy narrators team up with other cranks in demonstrations - 'hygiene demos' they call it in Germany. And the far right is taking advantage of them. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! At the same time, science communication is at the center of the social discussions surrounding COVID-19. Several virologists have reached a certain celebrity status, which is having a lot of ... interesting ... effects. At the time we recorded this, the juiciest one, had not happened yet, unfortunately. But still, we had some things to say. Disclaimer: as mentioned, this conversation was completely unprepared (usually we at least have some articles at hand). Feel free to fact check us, and let us know! And please take everything we say with a grain of salt. Resources: How are Germany's coronavirus protests different? (Deutsche Welle)Coronavirus, ‘Plandemic’ and the seven traits of conspiratorial thinkingStreeck, Laschet, StoryMachine: Vom PR-​Plan zum Exit-​Rush [GER]Heinsberg Study Results Published (University of Bonn)8 Cognitive Biases in Science and Society – with Dr. Bart Geurten

For this episode, Dennis talked to Dmitry Kopelyanskiy, a contest-winning science communicator who gives entertaining science talks on stage – mostly about his own research on tropical diseases. But here, Dmitry also talks about his academic career odyssey (from Russia to Switzerland via Israel and Germany), his path to science communication, and his involvement in “Skills for Scientists” – a career development program at the University of Lausanne. Over the past two years, Dmitry Kopelyanskiy has been quite successful at science communication contests. At FameLab he made it all the way to the international finals in the UK! But he also did rather well at a number of Science Slam events. Last year he had been involved with Pint of Science in Lausanne as an organizer, and he has become a moderator at FameLab. In the contests, the candidates must explain their science in a clear AND entertaining way. This is – as he says - a skill every scientist should have in order to defend their science; be it as a publishing academic, as a graduating Ph.D. student, or as a scientist who finds himself in a heated discussion with an antivax cab driver – as he once did. And if you can make it fun and interesting, even better! Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! But being a successful speaker did not come to Dmitry naturally. He remembers his first presentation as a Master’s student in Germany to be horrible! He mumbled while he was reading directly from his slides; his back turned to the class. When he finally turned around, he found the whole class holding their foreheads with their hands. His professor described the presentation as “not the worst” he had ever heard; which Dmitry thinks meant that it - indeed - had been the worst. Fortunately, he overcame his disheartenment and decided to go out of his comfort zone. Dmitry joined the Toastmaster clubs where people from different backgrounds practice public speaking and learn about storytelling and leadership. He continued working on his presentation skills, and he is still taking every opportunity to go on a stage and demonstrate his growth. To Dmitry, training your skills is one of the most important aspects of developing your career. Thinking about his own career outside academia after graduation, Dmitry wants to combine his best skill (public speaking) with his passion: science. Resources Dmitry Kopelyanskiy's WebsiteSlap in the face: How pathogens trick your immune system (Dmitry Kopelyanskiy– Science Slam)Skills for Scientists, Uni LausannePint of Science, Switzerland15x4 MunichToastmasters InternationalHugo Bettencourt talks about science communication and FameLab

During this season, once every 4 weeks, I pick one of the 13 most popular episodes from the first two years and post the original interview. These extended editions contain a couple of parts that didn’t make it into the final cut and give an insight into the underlying conversation. Supporters on Patreon have immediate access to these versions, btw. If you are one of them, thank you very much! If not, think about it! Find the final edition here! 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 Ph.D. 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 fieldwork trips themselves. Traveling in order to present your work at conferences is important to researchers and their careers, but for many, this is not affordable. Ph.D. students and postdocs are in the typical age for founding families. The academic career, however, demands mobility. For many, this means that they need to move countries several times – a factor that greatly affects life planning security negatively. And all of this is happening in a climate of increasing Ph.D. graduations and stagnating long-term or permanent job openings. Yet, leaving academia is often discouraged. Among early-career academics and their advisers it’s simply expected to try hard for an academic career. This often means that PhDs think about a possible transition outside of academia very late. And then there is always the gnawing question: Do I have any value on the private market? We don’t have an answer to the problems we highlight, but maybe we can work a little bit against the stereotype of the spoiled academic. And maybe we can push some early career researchers to think about plan B, earlier. sources: • YouTube Channel “Sea&me – Marine stuff with Maria”• The Stagnating Job Market for Young Scientists• Why a postdoc might not advance your career• These studies offer a realistic view of postdoc life—and guidance for making career decisions that work for you• How Ph.D.s Romanticize the ‘Regular’ Job Market

The initial statement of Scientists for Future in support of Fridays for Future came out just at the right time. In the public debate, it was a swift response to politicians who were trying to mute the student strikes by telling them to "leave it to the experts". In reality, scientists who had been concerned about the climate and the ecological damages human activities for decades had been working on the statement for a while. Among the authors was our guest Thomas Loew. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Thomas Loew is a German researcher who started his own Institute for Sustainability. He studies how companies can and should respond to the risks posed by ecological damages - on a management level. These studies are usually for the German federal government. Besides academic articles, the outcomes of his research are published in the shape of guidelines or recommendations to company managers. He finds that companies are ready for a change in order to address climate change. What is holding them back is that regulators hesitate to create market conditions to incentivize change and to decrease the economical risks of investing in new products and production lines. Understanding that climate action is too slow due to lacking regulation is what brought Scientists for Future together. And they quickly outgrew the initial statement. While not planned as such, some of the more than 26 000 signatories decided to continue and become more active for the cause. Today, Scientists for Future consists of many local groups that are loosely organized. Although Thomas Loew is officially an organizer of the movement across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Northern Italy, he usually learns about the activities of local groups through the news. However, to uphold consistency across the movement, Scientists for Future set up a kind of "Carta" that regulates which types of activities conform with the agreed-upon role of science in society: to research, to inform, and to consult. Resources Scientists for Future (international)Scientists for Future (German-speaking countries)Thomas Loew's Institute for SustainabilityYouTube video "The Destruction of the CDU" by Rezo (GER)

In this episode, Bart and I invited PhD candidate Daniela Buchwald from the German Primate Center – a private research institute. We compare how the University of Göttingen and the German Primate Center (GPC) responded to the impending shutdown of most research activities - with a focus on how the animals are being cared for. The conversation was recorded on Tuesday, March 17, just after the German local government began to take serious action to reduce public life to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Remember that when we talk about news reaching us on Monday, we mean “yesterday” at the time of recording. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Daniela studies the planning of grasping movements in monkeys‘ brains at the GPC. Currently, a thousand monkeys are hosted in the facility and Daniela’s group is working with 12 of them. Daniela had just defended her PhD thesis  - two weeks earlier than planned to avoid delays due to the lockdown. Other students weren’t so lucky. Their graduation will certainly be delayed. We do hope that potential future employers will take this into account. But Daniela, too, is facing career difficulties: She had planned to visit different conferences to talk to Principal Investigators about postdoc opportunities. But everything is canceled or postponed.  Hopefully, she will be able to connect with PIs online. The GPC responded relatively early. They began preparing for a possible lockdown and sent general notices (wash hands, social distancing, home working…). Most importantly: they began planning for the continued care of the monkeys. The institute divided the animal caregiver into 2 teams. These teams will alternate biweekly. So, if one team member becomes sick, the institute will know whom he or she had been in contact with. Monkeys can get the virus, too. So - although the monkeys get back on their feet and build an immunity quickly - the researchers decided to halt almost all experiments. Only monkeys with brain implants will still be trained and tested. That is because the implants are very sensitive and, once implanted, can only be used for a limited time. To stop these experiments would mean to lose enormous investments – including the monkey. At the University of Göttingen, where Bart works with flies and keeps zebrafish for demonstration purposes, things are a bit easier. The flies don’t need any attention for 2 weeks at a time, and the fish can be cared for by just two people. Bart and a colleague freed the students from these duties entirely. Resources Daniela Buchwald on Twitter

Dennis’s guest for this episode is David Spencer, a researcher in plant physiology and phytopathology in Germany. In his Ph.D., David uses genetic engineering to fortify soybeans against fungal infection. They explain why we need more resilient crops fast, why this would be great for the environment, and how genetic engineering can help achieve this. The episode complements the previous one (extended throwback with Hélène Pidon) which focused on explaining different breeding methods and how artificially induced mutations compare to naturally occurring ones. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! How can biotechnology make agriculture more environment-friendly? While wild plants defend themselves against pathogens and insects, our food crops lost their resilience. So, protective measures are needed to ensure yields: pesticides. When we spray a field with a pesticide, we apply large quantities and it gets everywhere, affecting the wildlife, the soil and the water. But when each plant produces its own insecticide, it applies just the right amount and only where it is needed. This is why David advocates for using genetic engineering to create crops that have both the high yield of modern crops, and the resilience of their wild relatives. The perfect plants to use in organic farming in the face of climate change and population growth. What is hindering implementation in the EU? Of course, breeders and scientists need to test the crops to ensure that they are safe for us and the environment. But the current EU regulations make the approval process so difficult and expensive that only the biggest companies can afford it – and only if large profit margins are to be expected. Public researchers and NGOs who predominantly have the good of the people in mind have no chance. Also, the EU does not allow for genetically altered plants to be tested in the field, preventing tests for environmental impact under realistic conditions. Not only do these regulations effectively prohibit the development and establishment of environmentally friendly crops with high nutritional value in Europe, but it also causes a ‘brain drain’: researchers are moving to countries with more reasonable regulations. What’s the flaw in EU regulations? First of all, for the approval of crops, the EU focuses on production methods instead of the actual safety of the food. The genetically identical plant, if bred through hybridization and crossing, faces lower hurdles, than if it was bred through genetic engineering; Although alterations made using gene editing are predictable and often indistinguishable from even the subtlest naturally occurring mutations, and alterations caused by hybridization are unpredictable and enormous. Further, regulators try to draw the line at alterations that ‘could not occur naturally’. But David points out that every imaginable gene alteration happens in nature, all the time. There are more than 3000 crops in use in the EU that had been created through random mutageneses – such as treatment with radioactivity – decades ago. But, because we have consumed them for generations with no harm, the regulation makes an exception for those. How does this make sense? Well, it doesn’t. Resources: David Spencer on TwitterInformation about CRISPR by Progressive Agrarwende (ENG)Falling Walls Lab 2019 – David Spencer: Breaking the Wall of Genetic ModificationEpisode 11: Genetically Modified Crops and the EU - with Hélène PidonAncient DNA from 8400 Year-Old Çatalhöyük Wheat: Implications for the Origin of Neolithic Agriculture Widespread impact of horizontal gene transfer on plant colonization of landWas der Mops mit Gentechnik zu tun hat (David Spencer – Science Slam –Research Ride)Pro-Gen-Technik und trotzdem Öko? (David Spencer – Science Slam)Klimawandel: Warum ist die Genschere CRISPR so wichtig, David Spencer?

During this season, once every 4 weeks, I pick one of the 13 most popular episodes from the first two years and post the original interview. These extended editions contain a couple of parts that didn’t make it into the final cut and give an insight into the underlying conversation.Supporters on Patreon have immediate access to these versions, btw. If you are one of them, thank you very much! If not, think about it! This time I present to you the full conversation to 11: Genetically Modified Crops and the European Union – with Hélène Pidon Plant geneticists are not happy with the European judgment 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 number 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. Crops have been genetically modified for millennia I was curious about the origins of agriculture and how simple artificial selection of nice-looking plants affected their genomes. For Millennia, farmers would choose a particularly good looking plant to sow its seeds in the next season. Unknowingly, they had a major impact on the whole genome of domesticated plants. For example, the size of the wheat genome tripled – a rather drastic modification. Plant scientists often view the cultivated plants as completely new species that can’t reproduce with their wild counterparts. Domesticated crops like these would not be able to survive in the wild and need constant attendance. Industrialized Agriculture With the population boom at the end of the 19th century, farmers needed to outsource their breeding efforts. Companies stepped in producing fertilizers, and pesticides, and also new breeding procedures. Now, specialized breeders would search for plants with valuable traits. These plants would then cross with the currently used crop plant in order to create a new variety with the new trait. However, if you breed your ‘elite’ plant with another plant, the offspring also inherits many unwanted traits. In order to get back to a plant that has all the traits of the current elite crop, and the additional new one, the plants need to be backcrossed with the elite variant many times. This is a very slow and tedious process. Mutagenesis To speed things up, breeders figured that it would be better to increase the variability in the offspring of the elite crop. This way they could simply select an elite crop with the new randomly added trait. To do so, breeders use radiation or chemicals to induce a mutation rate that is higher than under natural conditions. This method has been very successful. Today, every major crop has undergone mutagenesis at some point. Transgenesis and Gene Editing Today, the latest discoveries in genetics and developments of genetic methods allow identifying the genes underlying the beneficial traits breeders want to add to their crops. With transgenesis, scientists have first become able to introduce complete genes into a genome. The source of this gene is irrelevant. So-called ‘BT crops’ for example, are transgenic plants that received a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to certain insects. The insecticide these plants produce are proteins that act very specifically against specific insect species. This allows the farmers to use fewer insecticides that may not be as specific. While this technique had some problems in the past regarding the positioning of the new gene in the genome, it has been improved greatly since its introduction. The latest advancements in gene modification are gene-editing techniques like CRISPR. Here, only a few base pairs are changed in a specific gene ...

This episode marks the official end of the second year of this podcast! (unfortunately, there was still no present for Bart - consider becoming a Patron to help!) Apart from the plans for year 3, Bart & Dennis discussed the hot topic of the week: a provocative tweet by Richard Dawkins on Eugenics, and the dos and don’ts, and pros and cons of university rankings. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! AN AMBIGUOUS(?) TWEET Richard Dawkins (a famous evolutionary biologist and member of the royal society) tweeted that, while he deplores eugenic practice, ”it” would still “work”, as “it” would work in farm animals and pets – as if breeding animals was the same as eugenics. https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1229060502984306689 https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1229083369641824266 His tweet – as you have probably guessed - led to a heated debate on eugenics. And geneticists joined the uproar arguing that breeding would not even work in humans: all inbreeding (animals or crops) leads to genetic weakness - just look at pugs! Or the Lannister family! Bart acknowledges that certain opinions based on science are offensive to certain groups. But how could we communicate such opinions? Especially on a platform like Twitter? Regularly, the lives of people at the center of outrage are affected negatively. In the end, you can’t separate a term like eugenics from its fascist ideology. And if you make divisive tweets, you must expect a strong reaction. EVALUATING UNIVERSITIES Bart and Dennis compare two very distinct ways of ranking universities, and they discuss whether such a ranking is useful at all – or possibly even harmful. On the one hand, there is “Nature Index” by nature publishing group. It ranks institutes based on the number of papers published in a selected set of journals and by how often these papers are shared with authors from other institutes (as a measure of collaboration). Dennis points out that the journals considered are subjectively selected by an undisclosed number of scientists with undisclosed affiliations. The selection is further restricted to journals listed on Web of Science, a database that excludes many journals described as “local” – mostly journals that don’t publish in English, or simply aren’t “Western”. It also comes at no surprise that more than 20% of the journals considered by Nature Index are publications of nature publishing group. At least they didn’t use the Journal Impact Factor – you would say - but is this better? On the other hand, there is the NGO “CHE” (Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung - which Dennis would translate to Centre for the Development of Higher Education) who rank Universities in German-language-areas. Their criteria are very different: they look, for example, at the job prospects of graduates, the facilities at the university (gym, library, dorm), and even at the town and the general quality of life. High school graduates looking for a place to live and study are certainly better served with a CHE-kind of ranking than with the publication-based Nature Index. Having more research funding may not reflect the quality of life and education. Bart argues that he never even used a ranking system to choose where to study - he went for the best party location! And, on a more serious note, Bart and Dennis agreed that rankings, in general, may not only serve as an indicator for how an institution could improve, they could also give unhelpful incentives to publish in certain journals and intensify “money makes money” funding biases. PLANS FOR YEAR 3 As per usual, the interview episodes on big science, science communication, and academia will of course continue. Interviews are recorded – or at least planned – up until summer! For the talk episodes, we will try something new: “Bart & Dennis Against Humanities”. Both biologists with PhDs in neuroscience, they want to explore the strange world of the Humanitie...

For this episode, Dennis talked to Upulie Divisekera, the Australian molecular biologist and accomplished science communicator who co-founded “@RealScientists”. She shares how she got access to platforms with large audiences, and lessons from her SciComm experiences: that you should use storytelling and never underestimate your audience. If you are on Twitter and like to learn about science and the people behind it, you probably know @Realscientists, the Twitter rotating curation account. There, real-life scientists sign up to talk about science and their daily lives for a week at a time; showcasing the diversity of scientists, and breaking the trope of academics as an elitist group.   Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Beyond @RealScientists, Upulie Divisekera wrote articles for mainstream Australian newspapers, gave talks at cultural events, and partook at the first science panel of the TV show “Questions and Answers”. One of her many fascinating stories took place in 2011. Following the discovery of the first feathered relative of T. rex, @Upulie – as she is called on Twitter - both ranted and cheered for the new discovery. This got her invited to give a talk at TEDx Canberra! She doesn’t have a background in paleontology, but communicating the scientific results wasn’t the point.  In our imagination, the past was populated by enormous reptiles with big pointy teeth. But suddenly the new discovery forces us to re-imagine them as big fuzzy reptiles! The message: Science makes us re-evaluate our views of the world, past and future! Resources @Upulie Divisekra onTwitter@RealScientists on TwitterWikipedia: Upulie DivisekeraDinosaurs (and feathers), bosons, curiosity: Upulie Divisekera at TEDxCanberra 2012String Theory, Sea Turtles, AI and Pi - Q&A | 14 March 2016

In this episode, Bart and I talk about Wissenschaftsbarometer or “science barometer”. This annual survey in Germany and Switzerland is about the public’s trust in science and scientists. Afterward, we talk about a similar survey in the USA, published by the Pew Foundation a few months earlier. For each survey, we picked a couple of questions and interpret the answers.  As a side note: The extended version of this episode has two parts. Each one is more than an hour long. You can access both parts by becoming a supporter on Patreon. In the past, we asked for a minimum pledge of $5.99 per month for this perk. But now, any pledge will grant you access! Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Wissenschaftsbarometer (find the links to this survey in the sources, below) How much do you trust scientists and other public professions? Respondents trusted scientists at public research institutes and universities the most when compared to scientists in industry, the media, and politics. However, it’s still just about 56%. Maybe it's because for some people it depends on the fields of research whether they agree with the scientific consensus. Would you want to see how scientists work? An astonishing amount of respondents would like to watch scientists work in the lab (65%). Bart and I wonder how this could be made interesting. Most days in a scientist’s life are rather boring for the typical spectator. It’s refreshing that open days at universities are indeed visited well. Bart also mentions an uplifting study about how interested people with different political views are in science. Is the public sufficiently involved in decisions about science? 51% feel like they should have more say in this. This reminded Bart of the project “Fit for Responsible Research and Innovation”. They are promoting the involvement of stakeholders from society in research from the beginning (see sources). The discussion leads us to acknowledge the constantly changing economy and job market, and how this needs to be addressed. But overall it might be overkill to ask the public for permission for every little experiment. What are we taking out of this? What stuck with me was that most people do claim to trust in science. But Wissenschaftsbarometer does not investigate possible reasons why still a large proportion of citizens don’t. Pew Research Survey Trust and Mistrust in Americans’ Views of Scientific Experts (link in the sources) Confidence in scientists to work in the public interest is rising. But views on environmental research scientists, in particular, are a bit confusing. We were surprised to find so much less confidence in health specialists and environmental research scientists than in scientists in general. The respondents consider environmental research scientists “good people”. Yet, at the same time, they have little trust in environmental scientists to communicate their findings, to admit possible mistakes, or to reveal conflicts of interest. I try to explain it with the often encountered argument that environmental scientists had financial pressures. Something about which Americans seem to be more forgiving than Europeans … Maybe?  My Take-Home A major problem - in my opinion - is that identities often dictate which scientific facts people are comfortable accepting. Many science communicators provide facts nicely packaged for lay audiences and point out the benefits we all enjoy thanks to scientific progress. But they almost exclusively reach those who are already convinced.  When the science interferes with people’s identities, interests, and convictions - and those are the people who we'd like to convince - getting their attention is a major challenge. In the interview with Deboki Chakravarti (see sources), she points out how she was able to reach her audience on YouTube. Her subscribers didn’t know her as a scientist but as a book lover.

Life as an Early Career Researcher is rather uncertain. The conditions for most postdocs aren’t really great and the availability of professorships isn’t increasing at the same rate as the number of PhDs entering the academic career path - we talk about this, regularly. So it makes sense to seriously consider other career options, and we do so every now and then, too. For this episode, I talk to Dr. John Stowers, engineer, neuroscientist, and founder of "LoopBio", about the transition from postdoc to technology business founder! Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Academic Nomad After being hit by a natural disaster in New Zealand, John left his home country for a postdoc in Austria. He didn’t just switch countries, he also switched from engineering to neuroscience. In his time in Vienna, John developed experimental setups far ahead of the curve in terms of complexity. As other laboratories kept asking for his help with their own setups, he realized there was a market for a certain subset of the technologies he used for his own research. Moving Into Entrepreneurship When his adviser was about to leave Vienna, John faced the decision to either look for another postdoc position in Vienna, where his now-wife was still working on her Ph.D., or follow his adviser to Freiburg in Germany. He did neither. Because the postdoc came with many uncertainties and he didn’t see postdoc opportunities that he considered a step up in his career, he decided to become an entrepreneur, instead. After googling “How to found a company in Austria”, John and his partner got themselves legal and financial advice and founded LoopBio. How They Built It They used their professional network and the reputation John had gained by publishing an impactful paper to find early adopters. Those were laboratories in their field willing to invest resources in LoopBio in return for John and his partner to develop custom solutions for their high-end requirements. By focussing on exclusive customized systems for scientists in a narrow niche, LoopBio gathered experience and a reputation.  Now, a bit over three years later, John is satisfied with the course the company is taking, and they are looking to widen their customer base by investing in promotion at the leading neuroscience conferences. LoopBio Conference Booth (Left: Dr. John Stowers, Right: Max Hofbauer, MSc ) What John Learned On the personal side, John is very happy with his role as an entrepreneur. He says it gives him the freedom to choose his battles and to develop the products the way he wants them to work, which is particularly satisfying. Of course, there is still a good amount of stress involved, but it’s stress about different things. He urges early career researchers to realistically think about the uncertainties that lay ahead. Making clear career decisions every now and then is probably better than getting stuck in one career path for too long because one is trying to avoid them. LoopBio is Hiring They have two open positions: * Sales / Administrative Assistant* Junior / Front-end DeveloperBoth would be perfect for a scientist/programmer or science lover looking to transition to industry. All the fun of keeping up with the latest cool advances in behavioral (science) experiments without the burden of writing papers. Links LoopBio WebsiteLoopBio on TwitterVirtual Reality for Freely Moving Animals

In this episode, I talk about the science fiction movie ANYA with its creators, Anthropologist Dr. Carylanna Taylor, and Jacob Okada of First Encounter Productions (not a sponsor). The plot of ANYA could happen today! It all starts with a couple in New York that has difficulty having a baby. The groom is a member of the Narval People who keep to themselves - mostly because they think there is a curse that prohibits them from having children with anyone but other members of the community. They bring in a geneticist to find out why they are having problems procreating, and this is where the story becomes interesting. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! As his assistant accidentally analyzes the genome of Marco (Gil Perez-Abraham), an expert in neanderthal genomes Seymour (Motell Foster) finds a mutation that may explain the problem. The change in the genome happened in an "Ultra-Conserved Element", a real genetic phenomenon where certain regions in a gene never change. His hypothesis is that such a mutation may prohibit procreation with someone who doesn't carry the same mutation. Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. A population of people who can have viable offspring with each other, but not with other populations is considered a distinct species. Did Seymour discover a new species of humans? What does this mean for the Narval, the people named after the small island in the Caribbean on which they originated? Seymour suggests applying gene editing to allow Libby (Ali Ahn) and Marco to have a baby. This leads to a whole list of ethical questions that the movie wants to raise. And we talk about these issues in the episode. ANYA is being released on November 26th for download from Amazon, Apple, Google Play, vimeo and Hulu, and you can also order it as DVD. And the next big screening will be on November 30th at the SciFi FilmFest in Berlin! LINKS: ANYA the movieTrailerFirst Encounter ProductionsGenetics Paper featured in the movie: Abnormal Dosage of Ultraconserved Elements Is Highly Disfavored in Healthy Cells but Not Cancer CellsEpisode on the CRISPR babies in China

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 lines, which is bringen the expansion of renewable electricity production in Germany to a halt. To me, personally, this is a petty stance. Where I am from, the famous “Hambacher Forst” isn’t far. They didn’t just built some turbines and power lines, they removed whole forests and towns to mine brown coal. There are several coal plants, and mines, here. I took the photos for the artwork of this episode, myself. Both (wind turbines and coal power plant) were taken within walking distance from my home. Brexit Bart gives us a quick review of what happened prior to the last almost-brexit that happened on October 31st. But the reason we wanted to talk about brexit was that there were news from The Royal Society: UK science has already suffered greatly from the brexit-uncertainty. Resources The Royal Society Report29 Climate Action: Energiewende – with Rüdiger Eichel36 Energiewende II: Power Distribution24 Brexit: Its Impacts on Science and Scientists – B&D with guestsGerman government invests in hydrogen fuel technology [in German]

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 achieve this, too. So it is worth keeping your eyes on Germany and the Energiewende. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! The cheapest way to increase carbon neutral power is to have renewable sources for electricity, locally, and to have a power grid connecting far-away regions. Then you can simply move power from regions where there currently is a lot of electricity to those where renewables are currently not producing much - for example, because it is dark and the wind isn't blowing. A network across all of Europe could do the trick. However, there are regions in which people are resisting the installment of overhead transmission lines, and wind turbines. There, the energy needs to be transmitted there, differently - which is more expensive. But there are, indeed a range of technologies providing different options to solve the problem. resources:- follow Tom Brown on Twitter- Tom Brown's personal website- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)- Tom Brown's ArXiv paper explaining more about the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems

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 Portugal to Germany. Bart has some good news in terms of publications! Dennis also reports from his experience at the Global Climate Strike in Lisbon, Portugal. He talks about what he felt, about the involved parties, etc. He actually took a lot of pictures that you can see on our social media accounts: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! In the main part, then, Bart talks about the book "How Nations Fail" (not sponsored), which he recently read. He explains what "extracting" and "including" institutions are, and how the concept fits to academia.

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 Brain happen on Instagram. There, scientists can choose to either present their science in a 1 hour appearance on Instagram live, or they can do an AMA over three days. For the future, Chinmaya plans to add more features to the accompanying website, and another scicomm format on Instagram. He explains how this works, why he is putting in 2 hours every day in addition to working full-time on his research, and what the contributors can get out of this. You can find The Addictive Brain on their website, on Instagram, as well as on Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn. Videos are also posted on YouTube. The contact email is addictivebrain@gmail.com.

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 reason to have some hopes for a carbon-neutral future. links and sources: Press release of Bart's latest papercOAlition S - Plan STwitter Thread that made us aware of Elsevier SurveyElsevier Survery Report [PDF]The Journal Impact Factor: how (not) to evaluate researchers – with Björn BrembsAltmetrics: A Better Way to Evaluate Research(ers)? – with Steffen LemkeThe Liberation of Science – with Jon TennantCarbon-neutral Fuels from Air and Green PowerDennis' YouTube Channel

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, and what can be done to improve. And by doing so I hope we are also giving victims of harassment the chance to think through their options for handling their situation. Alice is a PhD student at the ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where she studies population movements in a particular region in West Africa. She is founding member of Speak Up in Academia, an independent grassroots peer-to-peer support association for victims of abuse at the ETH. In "Speak Up", members of ETH came together to find ways to improve the institutional culture at their institute. The main issues had been cases of sexual harassment, bullying, and scientific malpractice that the institution did not handle well. One specific case underlying the foundation of Speak Up happened in the architecture department. There had been a crowd-funding effort to cover legal costs on behalf of the victims. But then the president of the ETH decided to cover those costs. The left over money then could go into founding Speak Up in Academia. In addition, the founders of the Association were able to identify resources, such as psychological and legal advice from professional volunteers, during that case. So, Speak Up is now able to make these resources available to others facing similar problems. The main problem is that there is no established procedure at the ETH to investigate allegations of abuse of power. Instead, people come up with an ad hoc procedure that is different every time. And it is often dominated by the lawyers of the accused. This kind of unprofessional conduct is time consuming, and causes a lot of damage to everyone involved: mentally, financially and in terms of reputation of the institution. It is also deterring people from speaking up when they face or witness abuse. We discuss typical mistakes in handling abuse allegations throughout the episode. In summary, abuse of power has been around and will be around. Speak Up in Academia is working to identify issues in how the ETH in Zurich handles allegations of misconduct within their institutions. The goal is to establish appropriate processes for the internal investigation of such cases, and how victims can get the protection they need. They seek to do this by joining the official efforts of the institution. Speak Up further provides a peer-to-peer support network for people experiencing abuse. They have already received some financial support, and professionals such as psychologists and lawyers have stepped up volunteering their professional advice.  Yet, they won’t tell you to raise allegation as a victim without having thought about the consequences and without appropriate support. Not, as long as reforms in the procedures haven’t been implemented. Alice Hertzog wants all of us to be allies by speaking up when we see others being abused. And she invites everybody who has experience in handling cases of power abuse to get in contact to ...

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 a course correction and - at least to me - also has an optimistic association. The goal of the Energiewende is to achieve 80% of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2050, while at the same time leaving fossil fuels and nuclear power behind.   But the Paris Agreement asks for CO2 emission reduction across the board. And although the energy sector is the largest producer of carbon emissions in Germany, it is not the only one. In order to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, the mobility and transportation sector, as well as the industrial sector need to be transformed as well. This means that Germany, one of the most industrialized countries in the world with a population of 80 Million people ranking 4th in GDP worldwide behind the USA, China, and Japan, is setting out to re-invent its economy at its core. A challenge, and a chance at the same time. More Renewables Needed than Planned In order to charge all batteries, load all fuel cells, and produce synthetic fuels and chemical compounds for the chemical industry, we need additional power. And this is a problem since citizens in Germany are already complaining about wind turbines in their neighborhoods. Bavaria even changed the regulations making it basically impossible to add more turbines. Rüdiger Eichel is optimistic that we can achieve our goals. However, what has to happen first is a serious discussion within society about what we are willing to change and at what speed. Powering the Mobility and Transportation Sector Manufacturers are focusing on using lithium ion batteries for their electrical vehicles. However, with the global economy moving to electric personal mobility, lithium might become a rare element. And electric vehicles are currently too expensive for 80% of Germans. Ramping up EV production and sales significantly in the next 10 years will be difficult. Heavy duty and long distant transport, however, will likely never be done with battery powered vehicles. This is mostly because batteries - although high in efficiency - have a low energy density, meaning in order to have sufficient energy on board, planes and ships would have to deal with heavy additional loads. Here, synthetic fuels would be a solution. Unfortunately, at the moment their production cost is 5-8 times as high as fossil fuels. Eichel estimates that we could reduce the price for synthetic fuels (made from waste CO2) to twice as high compared to fossil fuels. But while synthetic fuels need to be produced using power, oil doesn't need as much processing to be used as fuel. So synthetic fuels can never be as cheap as fossil fuels. This is where a carbon tax can be used to make fossil fuels less profitable. And in the end, this would still mean that travel and shipping of goods will be much more expensive than today. We might not be able to go on vacations as often, or have off-season fruits and vegetables in the supermarket all year around.

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 Greens a good option for evidence based policies in general? Our own experience is with the Green party in Germany, so apologies for the German-centered politics discussion. If you aren't from Germany, please let us know what you think by getting in contact (see box for contacts)! We'd really like to hear other takes on this from other countries! Homeopathy We then talk about homeopathy. I recently wrote a short post on a current issue, where a German pharmaceutical company is trying to silence a homeopathy critic in Germany. Postdocs And finally we look back at the last episode on the conditions for postdocs we discussed in the last episode with Gary McDowell. We compare what "Future of Research" found with our own experiences and expectations as postdocs. further readings A quiet revolution sweeps Europe as Greens become a political forcePharma Company Admonishes Homeopathy Critics in Germany 27 Precarious Postdocs. A Future for Research? – with Gary McDowell

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 problem is the disconnect between the lived experience of junior academics, and their senior supervisors. At the same time the data they collected unveil systemic problems with postdocs in the USA, and Future of Research are working to change academia for the better. Postdoc: Advertisement and Reality The postdoc, as advertised, is a sort of apprenticeship position where PhDs develop their own research projects to become leading scientists heading their own labs. The reality is that postdocs have replaced staff researchers, working on their Principal Investigator’s project, and hardly ever being mentored, or trained in leadership and management. Even training in basic day-to-day parts of the work as an academic scholar, like conducting peer review, don’t seem to be part of their experience. At the same time postdocs are still being classified as “trainees” to justify not paying them their worth, and to deny them benefits such as proper health care. Salary Because postdocs are paid below their skill and experience levels, and mostly are not given the mentoring and training promised, they are basically exploited as cheap labor by the academic system. A few years ago, Obama tried to change a labor law, which would have had the effect that institutions would need to give postdocs a raise - or face the issue of having to actually keep track of postdoc working hours. Unfortunately this change didn’t become effective. On the bright side, most universities still implemented the raise - even though some universities apparently were trying to take it back. So this was good news. Future of Research collected salary data from postdocs just after this happened (and continues to do so for a longitudinal study), and found a median income of around $47484 - a number that clearly could be related to the planned labor law adjustment. So this was a positive finding. However, we should not forget that taking all people with doctorates in the USA, median salaries are in the ranges of $70 000 to $100 000. Even worse, doing a postdoc has negative long-term effects on income that have been tracked up to 15 years following graduation to a PhD, which seem to come as a surprise to many, including industry representatives. Benefits The USA are infamous for their bad health care and labor protection situation. Many PhDs from countries with socialized or mandated benefits, like in Europe, will be surprised that things like basic health care, vacation of more than 2 weeks, and maternal protection (let alone parental leave), are not really a given in America. And Universities often will take any excuse not to pay benefits. Vice versa, Americans appear to be quite surprised that in the UK, for example, there is a training time mandate by funding providers. In the USA the PI has full control over a postdoc’s time. And not only are PIs allowed to keep their “trainees” from getting trained in workshops and elsewhere,

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 you the full experience, he did not hold back on field specific jargon! But if you want to give it a try, here is the poster that comes with it: click for larger version Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. Become a Patron! links: • Neurowissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (NWG) • Women's Careers and Networks • Neurobiology Doctoral Student Workshop • LoopBio • Karin Nordström at Flinders University • Cellular Neurobiology Lab in Göttingen

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, when people understand what she is trying to explain. Elodie switched to science communication in 2017, after she had been organizing Pint of Science for 4 years, already. She joined Pint of Science, because she was interested in organizing event. And when somebody else quit, she took the opportunity to become part of the core organizer team. The work of a science communicator can be diverse. For Pint of Science Elodie trains speakers, and gives promotional talks. But she also speaks about science on podcasts or radio shows, and trains scientists in public speaking and social media use. She was able to transition into freelance work relatively smoothly, but she had established a profile over the previous 4 years, which was a lot of work. Pint of Science will be on May 20-22. To find out whether there are events in your area, visit their website pintofscience.com - since we recorded the interview, the programmes went online.   Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. Become a Patron! links: • Elodie Chabrol on Twitter • Pint of Science Website • Pint of Science on Twitter • Pint of Science on Instagram • Interview with Elodie on Youtube • "Podcast Science" [FR]

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 goes into the funding and promotion of research across the EU. The second important property of the EU for science is the freedom to travel, work, and live anywhere within the member states, as it is agreed in the Schengen Agreement. In 2016 the citizens of the UK voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. This means that all these benefits from 40 years of Pan-European negotiations, are lost and have to be negotiated anew. What are the consequences for Science in the UK and in the rest of the EU? Our guests talk about both the practical and formal consequences, but also the personal and social costs of Brexit. Summary On the funding site, the British Government will ensure the continuation of EU funded projects in the UK - at least for the 2-year transition period. A possible long-term solution would be the Swiss model. Switzerland contributes to the scientific funding in the EU financially, and in exchange Swiss labs can apply for EU funding programmes. On the side of free movement, there is a little bit more of a hassle. A lot of bureaucracy is going into this. While nothing may change regarding simple travel, moving between the UK and EU to work and live is much more complicated. The strongest impact, however, is the social one. The uncertainty of Brexit makes people reluctant to move to the UK to study or to do research. And it seems to have had affected the ability of UK labs to successfully apply for EU grants, negatively, for years. Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. Become a Patron! But it is not just funding and bureaucracy that deters students and researchers from moving to the UK. While surely many reasons have led to the outcome of the Brexit referendum, it did embolden xenophobia in the UK. Besides the chaotic political situation, this in particular has damaged the reputation of the British people. Maybe a silver lining for the EU is that the Brexit example may have detered other countries from seriously considering to leave the EU. This may give the EU a chance to instead work on its reputation of being a barely democratic institution that mostly panders to elites. I think everybody in this conversation agrees that leaving the EU is a bad decision that was made under questionable circumstances. And we all hope that the best solution for both UK and the rest of the EU can be found. links: • Andrew Phillipides' Insect Navigation Group • Thomas Nowotny • Clare Hancock

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, these metabolites are cleared out of the brain. It is also the time for certain cognitive housekeeping functions, such as memory consolidation. Lars Dittrich (left) with Bill Nye (right) on "Bill Nye Saves the World" Sleepiness is regulated through two parameters: the time since you last slept, and the time of the day according to your internal circadian clock. Both the preferred sleep duration as well as the timing of sleep in the day are different between people. On average we need between roundabout 8 hrs of sleep. If we force ourselves to sleep fewer hours per night than we need, this can have harsh health consequences, from cognitive decline to an increased risk for metabolic diseases - in particular diabetes - and possibly dementia. As teenagers, and when we move the time at which we have to get up to an earlier phase of the internal clock, we are awake at times that our circadian rhythm says is too early. Accordingly, we are more tired, and suffer from some reduced cognitive ability. Because of this scientist wonder whether it would be beneficial to have high school start later. And if we want to get rid of clock changes altogether, it would be better to permanently stick to standard time, rather than having daylight saving time all year round. Anyways, our conclusion can only be to better not take the advice from people like Schwarzenegger on sleep too seriously. I mean, especially someone like Schwarzenegger should know that lack of recovery time kills your muscle gains! Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. Become a Patron! links: • Lars Dittrich @sfprocur profile • Lars Dittrich on Twitter • "Lars und die Welt" on Facebook • "Lars und die Welt" blog • "Lars und die Welt" on YouTube

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 this option. This is a strongly disputed position. Especially young researchers may fear career breaking retaliation from authors with influential positions in the field. Science Twitter Our twitter rotating curation account @sfprocur has had its anniversary on March 13! In this context Bart and I talk about "science twitter", the growing (loosely defined) community of scientists that communicate on the social media platform Twitter. Overall we find that Twitter offers a great opportunity to talk about science with professionals and lay people. It's like the great "water cooler" at which scientists gather to talk about a great variety of topics. Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. Become a Patron! sources: • Bart's latest paper: Correcting locomotion dependent observation biases in thermal preference of Drosophila • Bart on Twitter • Dennis on Twitter • Susan on Twitter (@sfprocur co-admin) • Science for Progress Rotating Curation Account • Science for Progress on Twitter

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 specific disadvantages. But they also share problems due to the source of data they use: citation indices. Citations are slow to accrue, which means it takes time to build a sufficient amount of data for proper evaluation. The indices are also incomplete and mostly locked behind paywalls. And finally, they are solely focused on journal articles. But peer-reviewed research articles aren’t the only output scientists generate. Especially social sciences often publish in other formats, like books and monographs. STEM researchers, too, often create other outputs, such as designs for experimental setups, or code. Finally, citation based metrics focus solely on the communication between scientists, not with the public. Altmetrics New, alternative metrics aim to change all that. "Altmetrics" is an umbrella term for a range of still experimental metrics. They use data one can find openly on the internet. This makes them fast and diverse. They look, for example, at the dissemination of research articles on social media. But they also look at the download numbers of open repositories for code, lecture videos, presentation slides, and other resources. In this way they may cover any research product you can find on the internet. Whether a metric predicts a scientific impact (citations) fast and well, can be tested. So far it appears that data from online reference managers can predict citations well. You don’t need to wait for citing authors to write and publish their own papers, you just look if they bookmarked your paper for later use. An obvious disadvantage of altmetrics is that they can be gamed. One can buy services from social media providers to advertise posts. Or one can use bots to amplify the impact on social media, or download files thousands of times. Soberingly, researchers found altmetrics not to cover humanities and social sciences, sufficiently. Less than 12% of the research output from these fields showed up in the altmetrics tested. Social Media Use Steffen Lemke and his co-authors asked why there is so little representation of social sciences on social media. Surprisingly, while social scientists usually justify their work with the relevance for the public, they see interacting with it on social media as a waste of time. Some answered in the survey, that they would be overwhelmed by information. It was hard to tell the quality of information on the internet. Others say they’d not be seen as serious would they be caught using social media - even for work - by their supervisors. Metric-Wiseness In Steffen’s article you will find the interesting term “metric-wiseness”. Coined by a different research group, it describes the knowledge of researchers about metrics, and the ability to understand their meaning and applicability. In their research surveys, the *metrics project asks researchers about their knowledge of metrics. Even very junior researchers know about JIF.

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, we're publishing an episode every other week. I hope you agree that the production quality has increased. I am still working on improving my editing skills but I think that is also becoming better. Compared to the early episodes we went from one hour to 30 minutes, which I think is better. We also went from a conversation style to a narrative style in our interviews. I would be very interested to and to know what you think about that! Do you prefer the heavily edited version where I try to make everything more clear, or do you prefer to listen to a more natural conversation? I personally think that every episode has actually pretty good content, but the journal impact factor episode with Björn Brembs is a clear winner when it comes to downloads. In terms of content for the future I will continue to do episodes on Academia, topics of general interest like the GMO episode, and science communication. We then looked at some data from the paper on science communication podcast by Lewis MacKenzie. He looked at a number of science podcasts. I am not sure whether our podcast really fits in the study, because it doesn’t fit the criteria 100%. But still we compared our outcomes with those described in the paper. It turns out we are above average dedicated to this podcast! The median lifespan of independent (not affiliated to an institute or company) science podcast is just 16 episodes. I am happy to see that we did beat that already in the first year! The median survival rate of podcast that are affiliated with a company or an Institute of some sort, is 24 episodes, and I've already recorded our episodes 21 and 23, episodes 25 and 27 are in planning (update: actually, by the time this episode is published, I already recorded episode 25, too). Podcast Preview On March 3rd there will be an episode on alternative metrics, with Steffen Lemke. These “Altmetrics” are supposed to complement citation based metrics such as the journal impact factor or the H-index. I talked with Steffen about the advantages and disadvantages of these metrics. On March 31st there will be an episode called “Sleep Faster” with Lars Dittrich. Until recently, Lars studied sleep, and we talked about whether it is a good idea to try shave off a few hours of sleep every night in order to get more productive hours during the day. On April 28th there will be an episode about the Pint of Science with Elodie Chabrol. Pint of Science is a science communication event that happens once a year and has grown massively over the last six years. And finally on May 26th there will be an episode called “Energiewende” with Tanja Kneiske. Tanja works for the Fraunhofer Institute on smart power distribution systems. We will talk about the German transition out of fossil fuels and nuclear power, the efforts to replace them completely with renewable energy. He Jiankui The Chinese researcher who created the first genetically edited babies,

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 academic career, however, demands mobility. For many this means that they need to move countries several times - a factor that greatly affects life planning security negatively. And all of this is happening in a climate of increasing PhD graduations and stagnating long-term or permanent job openings. Yet, leaving academia is often discouraged. Among early career academics and their advisers it's simply expected to try hard for an academic career. This often means that PhDs think about a possible transition outside of academia very late. And then there is always the gnawing question: Do I have any value on the private market? We don't have an answer to the problems we highlight, but maybe we can work a little bit against the stereotype of the spoiled academic. And maybe we can push some early career researchers to think about plan B, earlier. Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. Become a Patron! sources: • Oceans for All - promotes ocean science and ocean science communication • YouTube Channel “Sea&me - Marine stuff with Maria” • The Stagnating Job Market for Young Scientists • Why a postdoc might not advance your career • These studies offer a realistic view of postdoc life—and guidance for making career decisions that work for you • How Ph.D.s Romanticize the ‘Regular’ Job Market

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 how difficult it is to know in advance what the outcomes of a study will be good for, particularly in fundamental research. We then address the ethical considerations of the value we assign to different animals. Testing your data for equivalence The statistical tests usually applied in scientific studies look at the data of two or more groups and check whether they are different enough to say that there is an effect between them. It appears that often lack of such differences is used as an argument against publishing the data at all. Because of this, experiments may be repeated unnecessarily by different groups, simply because they don't know about the results. The paper that Bart highlights is "A new statistical method to test equivalence: an application in male and female eastern bluebird song" by Rose et al, 2018 (link below). In order to show that the songs of male and female Eastern Bluebirds are not just not significantly different, but identical, they applied this new statistical method. This may allow scientists to pick up some of their old studies and publish them! Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. Become a Patron! sources: • Figures of animals used for scientific purposes in Germany • FORSCHUNG MIT TIEREN IMMER EFFIZIENTER (“research on animals is becoming more efficient”) • PRESSEKONFERENZ DER INITIATIVE TIERVERSUCHE VERSTEHEN (press conference of the initiative “understanding animal experiments” • Verwendung von Versuchstieren im Jahr 2017 (Use of laboratory animals in 2017 - official website of the German Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Nutrition) new statistical method: • A new statistical method to test equivalence: an application in male and female eastern bluebird song

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 specific proteins on the surface of unwanted cells.  CAR stands for "chimeric antigen receptors", receptor molecules that were designed by scientists to recognize specific cells. When scientists equip t-cells with these special "CAR" molecules, they can detect cancer cells. Specifically engineered immune cells are necessary, because the patient's immune system has a hard time recognizing cancer cells. This is because cancer grows out of the patient's own body cells and tumors carry much of the same markers as healthy body cells. PhD and "BookTube" Channel "okidokiboki" Deboki uses her YouTube Channel to talk about books, but also about her experience as a PhD student. The friends Deboki made in grad school have been some of the most supportive people she met. She experienced grad school as very isolating experience, and she realized that her friends felt the same way. Sharing their feelings and experiences helped Deboki and her friends deal with the stress in graduate school. On YouTube Deboki realized that the people who followed her for her book reviews, also became interested in her personal life. So, when she began to add videos talking about her PhD experience, these were greeted with interest, too. And other PhDs and PhD students related greatly with these videos. Leaving Academia Deboki comes from a family of academics and going to some kind of extra school after college seemed the normal thing to do. She also wanted to do research. However, during her PhD she realized that she did not want to follow an academic career. She began to apply for jobs and internships in Science Communication for almost a year before she graduated. This way she had time to learn how this process works in this area. She sent applications for a wide range of jobs at first, and through this process learned enough to narrow her search down and go specifically for an internship. After sending in her cover letters, resumes and portfolio to many places, she was invited to interviews by some of them. These interviews were all by phone or video conferencing. The interviews were focused on why Deboki was interested in doing science communication with video. Deboki's portfolio only consisted of her videos. She worried her videos weren't professional enough, but this was unwarranted. The technical quality of  her work wasn't the main focus for her interviewers. They were more interested in the combination of skills, being a PhD on one side, and communicating with video on the other side. Internship with Scientific American She was accepted for an internship with Scientific American where she got to do exciting work. She made explainer videos, helped interview a nobel prize laureate, worked on a podcast for "60 seconds science", and she learned to do animations. Deboki had no experience with creating animations prior to this internship. But she found that learning to create animations wasn't much different from le...

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 on He Jiankui. After an appearance at a conference in Hong Kong, He Jiankui went missing, and it still seems to be unclear where he is. Some news outlets reported the Dr. He was put under house arrest. In this episode, Bart Geurten (@BartGeurten) and I (Dennis Eckmeier, @DennisEckmeier) have a conversation about what we understand about what happened. (Recorded Dec 16th, 2018) What Happened? He Jiankui is a geneticist who works on genetic alteration of human embryos. In some countries, scientists can get permission to experiment on human embryos when the embryos are just a few cells big. Such embryos, however, may not be allowed to develop into full human beings. The goal of such experiments is, for example, to establish safer methods for gene therapies. The embryos are created through in-vitro-fertilization, an established practice for couples who are having trouble having healthy babies. Eggs and sperms are brought together outside the woman’s body, and the growing embryos can be tested for possible gene defects. Healthy embryos can then be implanted in the becoming mother’s womb. But He implanted genetically modified embryos in the womb of a woman, which the scientific community has many problems with. The two embryos have become babies and were born several months before the announcement. What exactly did He Jiankui try to achieve? He Jiankui wants to protect children of HIV infected parents from infection, AIDS, and social discrimination that comes with HIV infection. The medical community, however, does not agree that gene modification would be an appropriate method to accomplish this. There are numerous ways to protect yourself from infection with HIV by following simple rules of caution. He chose couples where the father is HIV positive, while the mother is not. To protect the mother, such couples can use in vitro fertilization, if they want a child. In the process of IVF, the HIV is removed. Was the treatment well designed? So there was no medical necessity for this treatment. But let’s say there would have been. To genetically protect the children from HIV, He Jiankui attempted to change a gene (CCR5) to a specific variant (delta32) that is believed to play a role in HIV resilience. But the scientific community agrees that they don’t know enough about the gene’s function. Genes code for proteins, and the same protein may play different roles in different bodily functions. Besides it’s implication in HIV resilience, the delta32 variant of CCR5 seems to be just as likely to increase vulnerability to influenza and the West Nile virus. There seems to be one study that even claims it might play a role in increasing cognitive ability. If the experiment worked, He may have introduced human enhancement which he himself says would be unethical. Or he may have put the girls at an increased risk to die from the flu. This means that this was a highly risky experiment and He may ...

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 good study subjects from a practical standpoint. The history of medical research shows that animal research translates well to humans in most cases. The consensus is that animal suffering should be minimized In order to make animal experimentation conduct as humanely as possible, international legislation applies the 3R principle: Replace animal use where animal-free methods would provide equal or better results.Reduce the amount of animals used per experiment, and make the experiments as informative as possible.Refine experimental protocols to cause as little pain, suffering, and distress as possible. When talking about methods to test the toxicity of compounds, animal testing is successfully replaced by animal-free methods. For example by using cells grown in a dish. As soon as they have been validated, these methods can be implemented on a larger scale. This makes them very cost efficient. The development, however, is expensive and it does involve animal experiments. Animal testing for cosmetics was banned by the EU, and it is further illegal to sell cosmetics for which new tests on animals were conducted. Only compounds used for medical purposes still need to be tested on animals for safety reasons. When we talk about physiological research, the replacement of experiments by animal-free methods is less feasible. Of course there are - and always have been - animal-free methods which have advantages for specific questions. And often studies are animal free up until the point at which the questions concern the whole animal. Animal-free “in vitro” methods are being further developed. The latest innovations being “organs on a chip”, and “organoids”. Both represent miniature versions of single organs and have some degree of complexity beyond 'simple' cell cultures. What are the limits of animal-free methods? I am a neuroscientist, and in neuroscience, “organoids” have been hyped as “mini brains”. This is a crude exaggerations. While they do have neurons connecting to some degree, they are still far from being actual brains. Some researchers even raised the ethical issues of perfecting neuronal organoids to actual “mini brains”. Could such a brain experience suffering? Anyways, in neuroscience, in the end, we need to study the function of the nervous system in the context of animal behavior. And for that, we need the whole living animal. And this leads us to the final conclusion on the limitations of artificial “in vitro” (cell cultures, organoids, etc) and “in silico” (computer models) methods for studying physiology. In order to recreate the whole physiological system of an animal, and study it, we need to already know everything there is to know about that animal. In other words, we would not need the model anymore. Which regulations do researchers need to comply with? There is a whole lot. The researcher needs to be licensed, the animal keeping facility needs to be licensed,

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 modification was unscientific. Listen to the Full Conversation on Patreon! Do you have questions, comments or suggestion? Email info@scienceforprogress.eu, write us on facebook or twitter, or leave us a video message on Skype for dennis.eckmeier. Become a Patron! sources: • NBDT website and twitter account • "Das Problem mit wissenschaftlichen Studien" (German language) • Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim • 11: Genetically Modified Crops and the European Union – with Hélène Pidon • Dennis' guide on being a podcast guest.

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. They speak, for example, about networking and resume writing in their episodes. But what really brought them together was the emotional struggle of leaving the Ivory Tower. So they speak with their guests about the experience of leaving, the reactions of academic peers. The feelings of failure. This is a "crossover" episode of Recovering Academic and Science for Societal Progress. Besides talking about how Amanda, Cleyde and Ian met and why they decided to create Recovering Academic, I wanted to know what they themselves learned from doing the podcast, and which episode they liked the most. We talked about my story, too, which you can listen to in their version of this episode. Recovering Academic WebisteRecovering Academic rotating curation twitter account: @RecoveringAcadAmanda Welch, Scientific Dispatches Consulting, @LadyScientistCleyde Helena, @DoctorPMSIan Street, @IHStreetmentioned episode "Finding Your Fungus"

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 at 'top' journals blocked his attempts to publish an article about how the JIF is created. The reviewers claimed that everybody would already know about this. Based on Bart's experience, and the feedback I received on Twitter, this is definitely not the case. Bart suggests bypassing commercial journals to reach the community through society communications and similar outlets (for example 'DZG news', an outlet of the German Zoological Society). We point out a couple of characteristics which make a successful scientist in our eyes, and talk about the difficulty of measuring these. One metric in use is the Hirsch index, which also uses citations of each single article. In principle, this is one step better than the JIF. But it has it's own problems, since the potential citations differ widely, for example by accessibility of the paper (open access versus closed access), dissemination on social media, size of the research field the work is directly relevant to, the type of the article (research report, method paper, review article, etc.). And non of these things have anything to do with the abilities of the authors. What would be merits other than the success of an article? Obviously we didn't find a solution, but we talk about: having an impact on the field by making tools and data availableoutreach to the publicresearcher autonomynovelty of the research approachthe ability to turn funding into positive outcomes (efficiently)leadership and management skills Resume Our advise for early career researchers: Go for high journal impact factor journals, and apply to ALL of the grants and awards. Apart from that, we think it is important for the scientific community to move away from the JIF and towards new metrics, Open Science, leadership training for postdocs and young principle investigators, and modern team management techniques. notes and further readings JIF is positively correlated with retraction raterecent German language article by Björn Brembs in labjournal10 Easy Ways to Increase Your Citation Count: A ChecklistThe open access advantage considering citation, article usage and social media attention

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 wheat genome tripled - a rather drastic modification. Plant scientists often view the cultivated plants as completely new species that can't reproduce with their wild counterpart. Domesticated crops like these would not be able to survive in the wild and need constant attendance. Industrialized Agriculture With the population boom at the end of the 19th century, farmers needed to outsource their breeding efforts. Companies stepped in producing fertilizers, and pesticides, and also new breeding procedures. Now, specialized breeders would search for plants with valuable traits. These plants they would then cross with the currently used crop plant in order to create a new variety with the new trait. However, if you breed your 'elite' plant with another plant, the offspring also inherits many unwanted traits. In order to get back to a plant that has all the traits of the current elite crop, and the additional new one, the plants need to be back crossed with the elite variant many times. This is a very slow and tedious process. Mutagenesis To speed things up, breeders figured that it would be better to increase the variability in the offspring of the elite crop. This way they could simply select an elite crop with new randomly added trait. To do so, breeders use radiation or chemicals to induce a mutation rate that is higher than under natural conditions. This method has been very successful. Today, every major crop has undergone mutagenesis at some point. Transgenesis and Gene Editing Today, latest discoveries in genetics and developments of genetic methods allow to identify the genes underlying the beneficial traits breeders want to add to their crops. With transgenesis scientists have first become able to introduce complete genes into a genome. The source of this gene is irrelevant. So called 'BT crops' for example, are transgenic plants that received a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to certain insects. The insecticide these plants produce are proteins that acts very specifically against specific insect species. This allows the farmers to use less insecticides that may not be as specific. While this technique had some problems in the past regarding the positioning of the new gene in the genome, it has been improved greatly since it's introduction. The latest advancement in gene modification are gene editing techniques like CRISPR. Here, only a few base pairs are changed in a specific gene to change it's properties. The European Court of Justice rules that Gene Editing was unsafe It is counter intuitive, but the EU prefers random gene modification with unknown collateral mutations over highly precise minimalist intervention with known outcomes. Hélène explains her view on this situation covering topics like adaptation of agriculture to climate change, glyphosate, and organic farming.

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 there and in general keeps it lively. If you are interested, send me an email to socialadmin@scienceforprogress.eu inviting opinion piecesI hope you noticed that I made some design changes to make these bog posts more pleasing to the eye, in particular for longer reads. This is because I want to invite writers to publish opinion pieces with us. Sadly, I can not pay for such articles. I would really like to commission pieces to professional writers, but I simply can't. So if you are thinking about contributing an article despite of that, make sure it includes some promotion for yourself or your own project. More podcast episodes!I want to add some more discussion to the podcast. But because the interview episodes are usually already pretty dense in information and fill 30 minutes easily, I don't want to add this discussion to the interview. It is also good to have some time between interview and discussion so I can gather some feedback from you, our listeners. So we will alternate interviews and 'Q&A episodes', in which we will talk about some news, what is going on in Science for Progress, and then discuss the previous interview. This format should also be about 30 minutes in duration. This also means that we are moving from an episode every three weeks, to an episode every two weeks. Feedback Intersting interview with @brembs about journal impact factors- for people who know about the issues always interesting, for those who don’t even more important! #science #WhatScienceIsImpacting https://t.co/RnQwpajLc5— Simon Sprecher (@simon_sprecher) 17. September 2018 This is a great comment! Being interesting to people who know about the issue while being important to those who know is pretty much the sweet spot where I want the podcast to be. I hope there will be many more episodes receiving praise like this! I'm listening to @SciForProgress podcast on impact factor. Everyone should listen at least to the 1st 5 minutes of it. When they say this is known: I did not know! And I've been doing science for 10 years now.— Science is not Glamorous (@Science_glamour) 29. September 2018 I have been thinking the exact same thing! I knew things weren't 100% correct with the Journal Impact Factor, but I didn't know about the details, either! When Björn Brembs says 'it is known' he didn't mean everybody is aware, but that the information is openly available, if you look for it. Which I think most of us don't! Well, its wonderfull. As authentic and on spot as everything in the project— Zé (@93Antidote93) 13. September 2018 What more can I say than that this warms my heart. :D BECOMING A PATREON COMMUNITY! Become a Patron! As I mentioned further up, I currently do not have a steady income and it may take a while to get there. This is why I need your help to continue investing my time and money into improving and growing Science for Progress activities.

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, is not applicable for skewed distributions. Moreover, basic statistics and probability tell us that if you blindly choose one paper from a journal, it is impossible to predict -or even roughly estimate - its quality by the average citation rate, alone. It is further impossible to know the author's actual contribution to said paper. Thus, we are already stacking three statistical fallacies by applying JIF to evaluate researchers. But this is just the beginning! Journals don't have an interest in the Journal Impact Factor as a tool for science evaluation. Their interest is in the advertising effect of the JIF. As we learn from our guest, Dr. Björn Brembs (professor for neurogenetics at University of Regensburg), journals negotiate with the private company Clarivate Analytics (in the past it was Reuters) that provides the numbers. Especially larger publishers have a lot of room to influence the numbers above and below the division line in their favor. Reputation is not quality. There is one thing the Journal Impact Factor can tell us: how good the reputation of the journal is among researchers. But does that really mean anything substantial? Björn Brembs reviewed a large body of studies that compared different measures of scientific rigor with the impact factor of journals. He finds that in most research fields the impact factor doesn't tell you anything about the quality of the work. In some fields it may even be a predictor of unreliable science! This reflects the tendency of high ranking journals to prefer novelty over quality. How does this affect science and academia? The JIF is omnipresent. A CV (the academic resume) is not only judged by the name of the journals in a publication list. Another factor is the funding a researcher has been able to get. However, funding committees may also use JIF to evaluate whether an applicant is worthy of funding. Another point on a CV is the reputation of the advisers, who were also evaluated by their publications and funding. Another important point on a CV is the reputation of the institute one worked at, which is to some degree evaluated by the publications and the funding of their principle investigators. It is easy to see how this puts a lot of power into the hands of the editors of high ranking journals. Björn Brembs is concerned about the probable effect this has on the quality of science overall. If the ability to woe editors and write persuasive stories leads to more success than rigorous science, researchers will behave accordingly. And they will also teach their students to put even more emphasis on their editor persuasion skills. Of course not all committees use JIF to determine who gets an interview. But still the best strategy for early career researchers is to put all their efforts into pushing their work into high ranking journals. What now?! We also talk about possible solutions to the problem.

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 locomotion in fruit flies. But coming across the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky on Prospect Theory, he decided to discuss cognitive biases with students in a seminar at the University of Göttingen (Germany). When I asked Bart to record this episode, we were in a campervan on a highway in Australia. It was the middle of the night, we were both sleep deprived and jetlagged, and he was having near death experiences because ... well, I don't usually drive on the wrong side of the road. These are the lengths we went for this podcast, so I hope you all appreciate this! further readings Most of what we discussed can be found in Daniel Kahneman's famous book 'Thinking Fast and Slow'. I wikipedia-ed most of the topics for you: Heuristic Müller-Lyer Illusion Kanizsa's Triangle Availability Heuristic Conjunction Fallacy (Linda Problem) Base rate fallacy Gambler's Fallacy Prospect Theory Migration Crisis in Europe Correction: The unusual series of roulette results occurred in Monaco, not Macao.

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 researchers, and help researchers with their application process. If you are interested in such a profession at the 'interface of science' in Portugal, Cristina is part of the 'Plataforma de Inferface à Ciência' (Platform for the Interface of Science), which you can reach through their website, and their Facebook group.