Science for Progress

Science for Progress


Latest Episodes

27 Precarious Postdocs. A Future for Research? – with Gary McDowell
May 26, 2019

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...

26 B&D: Conferences. What are they good for?
May 12, 2019

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!

25 SciComm: Pint of Science – with Elodie Chabrol
April 28, 2019

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.

24 Brexit: Its Impacts on Science and Scientists – B&D with guests
April 15, 2019

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),

23 Don’t ‘Sleep Faster’ – with Lars Dittrich
March 31, 2019

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.

22 B&D: Peer Review & #ScienceTwitter
March 17, 2019

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 pla...

21 Altmetrics: A Better Way to Evaluate Research(ers)? – with Steffen Lemke
March 03, 2019

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?

20 B&D: 1st Anniversary! Podcasts, and Trusting Scientists
February 26, 2019

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 wil...

19 Insecurity and Uncertainties for Early Career Academics – with Maria Pinto
February 03, 2019

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.

18 B&D Animal Use and Statistics of Equivalence
January 20, 2019

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 ou...