As the initiator of the movement “Scientists for future,” could you give us a “peek behind the scenes”: How did you come up with the idea and how did the concept evolve? Like many others, I was concerned by the slow progress of the sustainability agenda. That is, not just climate change, but also, for example, biodiversity loss, loss of soils, food security, and questions of human rights and justice.
You are offering workshops where researchers can learn how to achieve more impact with their work outside of academia. Why is this important? I have been providing training on knowledge translation, otherwise known as impact pathways, and research impact for the last five years to build the capacity of researchers and research support staff.
Doing research and getting paid for it is fantastic, but how to do that sustainably and maintain the interest of research funders? Even funders themselves cannot give a definite answer, but some trends can be pointed out. Admittedly, there are still universities and academic systems where nepotism and feudal-like arrangements rule, and the points made here do not concern them.
Research cannot just observe the society from an isolated and abstract “outside world”. It has to take up its societal tasks: search for the truth, but also provide contributions to problem-solving and make reliable predictions, when it comes to ominous societal challenges. Former president of the Humboldt University Berlin Prof.
Retraction Watch was launched to provide insights into cases of scientific fraud and grant a window on the retraction process. How does the scientific community react when you publicly report on retractions of scientific papers?
What is the overarching problem with scientific impact? Scientific impact can be understood as the influence on other research, for example by providing confirmative or contradicting results, new research questions, or breakthrough methods.
What is the difference between bibliometric impact and societal impact? There is a tremendous difference between bibliometric and societal impact. I devoted a blog post to this when I had the honour of reaching 100 publications in the peer-reviewed literature. I didn’t feel the sense of accomplishment that I imagined I might have—and should have—felt.
Climate skeptics, conspiracy theorists, and the anti-immunization movement are on the rise. At the same time, fraudulent research and issues with the replicability of scientific results prompt the question if science is still a reliable source for political decision-making. In your opinion: Where is science going wrong? The divide between science and society is not necessarily the fault of society and a few crazy individuals.
Introduction Today a system that sets wrong incentives for the scientific community is prevailing that is relying on an outdated system for the communication of science through centralized publisher cartels. As a result, science in some fields is suffering from increasingly poor reproducibility. This bears the risk of loss of credibility among the public and increased scarcity of public funding (Ioannidis, 2005;
Why do you care about impact? It is quite important to understand some aspects of geology to give us the insights of how the earth has evolutioned throughout times, what happened to climate and thus predict how it will change in future. This is one reason why I care about impact. Another one – a lot of the work we do is related to the oil industry. So we help them to find solutions that make this work more efficient and safe.
