Maxie Gottschling and Helene Brinken work at Göttingen State and University Library for the project FIT4RRI in the field of “Open Science” and “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI).

Maxie has a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology. She has been working in Open Access related projects since 2010. With a background in Information Science, Helene started her activities for Open Science and RRI in 2017.

Together they work on promoting and sharing best practices on responsible research. A RRI-way of research means to involve all actors influenced by ones’ activities and to make sure the processes are inclusive, reflective, transparent as well as adaptive to change. Helene and Maxie hope to inspire scientists to start their journey towards practicing RRI. At the same time, they would like to raise awareness to the public that citizens are a major player in science; they can and must be involved in research that frames their future. Aligning research with the values of society is a key principle of RRI.

Background

In case you did not know, we do have a merchandise store with Teepublic! And I try to make a new Science for Progress design every month! Or every other month! Or so!

When I put a new design up, there is a 3 day sale during which you can get things with this design on it at a 30% discount!

The sale for this design ended February 3rd 2019, 12:30pm (ca)

So, just now I added this design:

You can put it on t-shirts, mugs, laptop bags, cushions, stickers, baby onesies(!!), phone cases, and a couple of other things!

I really enjoy making these designs, and I hope you like them, too!

Also, I get a small percentage from every sold item!

Linda Amarante and Samantha White are two PhD students at American University in Washington, D.C., USA. Besides researching the role of the prefrontal cortex in decision making in rats, they help run the OpenBehavior website and its @OpenBehavior twitter account. There, they share and promote open source, low-cost software and hardware that can be used for behavioral neuroscience.

Linda and Samantha are excited to make scientists and non-scientists aware of the benefits of open science. They’ll show examples of how these creative projects can be used in neuroscience and other scientific disciplines, but also how they are interesting for the DIY hobbyists as well. In their week on @SfProcur, they hope to inspire us all with new ideas for scientific research and collaboration.

Background

I am happy to announce our new monthly newsletter! I will share what’s new, what happened in the previous month, and what’s going to happen in future!

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!

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.

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.

Lauriane Nallet-Khosrofian is a PhD candidate in Neuroscience in
Zürich, Switzerland. As we talked about in a previous podcast episode, she is concerned about mental health of PhDs and Postdocs. She is further interested in the place of gender equality in academia, and science communication. Lauriane tries to participate in different projects regarding these topics: interviews, podcasts, blogs… Recently, she started the launch of the scientific festival “Pint Of Science” in Zürich.

During her week on @SfPRocur, she will talk about skills of academics that are transferable to other workplaces, and different ways of personal growth outside of the lab.

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It has been a while since I made the first video on how to subscribe to our podcast, and since then some things has changed. In particular, Spotify is now listing Science for Societal Progress. Also, Google launched a new podcast app, that is included in Android – and they found us, too, already!

So, the video is for new podcast listeners who want to subscribe to Science for Societal Progress. But, of course, the principle is the same for all podcasts:

There are two categories of tools you can use:

1. Podcast / Audio Apps such as
— Google Podcast (Android native)
— ITunes / Apple Podcast (iOs native)
— stitcher, player.fm, blubrry, etc.
— Spotify

2. RSS feed readers (I use feedly)

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!

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?