In this episode, Bart and Dennis discuss the use of animals in research, and a new statistical method that may allow publishing previously unpublishable research results.

I spoke with Dr. Deboki Chakravarti about transitioning from a PhD to science communication. Dekobi recently received her PhD in bioengineering for her research on fighting cancer. But she had already decided to leave academia and instead move into a career as science communicator. Leveraging her experience as a YouTuber, Deboki did an internship with Scientific American.

This is the complete conversation I recorded with Dr. Nuno Henrique Franco on Animal Wellbeing in research. We talk about why we do animal research, which ways there are to avoid animal research, the policies surrounding animal use and housing, EU legislature, and outreach approaches to inform the public.

Dr. Nuno Henrique Franco is Assistant Researcher at the Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, i3S (Institute for Investigation and Innovation in Health) at the University of Porto, Portugal. His research focuses on laboratory animal welfare, along with ethical, legal, social and scientific issues in animal research.  

The extended episodes of our podcast are only available for Patrons for the first 7 months before they are made public.

In this episode we talk about a new “overlay” journal, which circumvents a couple of sources for Conflicts of Interests. We then discuss whether every scientists needs to be involved in science communication, especially whether they should be forced to write a jargon-free abstract for lay people. And finally we talk about genetically modified crops, animals, and humans!

The overwhelming majority of PhD holders will not find a permanent position in academia. Recovering Academic is a podcast by three former scientists who left academia. In the podcast they talk about the difficulties academics face when transitioning out of the apparent safety of the Ivory Tower. As a “recovering academic” myself, I suggested a crossover episode.

This is the complete conversation with only little clean up. Recovering Academic also already published their final version here: https://recoveringacademic.net/season-3-episode-4-interview-with-dennis-eckmeier/

Hey! This is the first director’s cut episode with co-host Bart Geurten! Because it is being shared and discussed quite a bit, we discuss episode 9, where Björn Brembs explained to us the impact of JIF on academia.

It is somewhat long even for a director’s cut. Let me know what you think!

The European Union ruled to treat CRISPR, a highly precise gene editing technique, as unwanted technique for the modification of crops.

Is this justified by safety issues? 

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As you may know, we have a Patreon account where supporters of Science for Progress sign up to make a monthly pledge! As a thank you I make the full conversations with my podcast guests available to our patrons.

After 7 months I release the episode, so everybody can listen to it!

This time I released this very popular episode on the Journal Impact Factor with Björn Brembs!