because science is fundamental in the 21st century
In the podcast we talk about topics related to science, humanities, society, and of course progress!
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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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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).
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?
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.