Annual BRCP Online Symposium 2021
The symposium took place over two days: 5 - 6 November 2021, 2 pm start. All times are in CET.
The program includes four main events, each about 90 mins (more-or-less flexible end time).
November 5, Friday, 2 - 3:30 pm:
November 5, Friday, 5 - 6:30 pm:
November 6, Saturday, 2 - 3:30 pm: Metascientific discussions on topics as already polled by members
Main topic: Pedagogical approaches to research concepts (short introductory presentation by Alexander Thomas)
Others topics: Diversity, Mental Health
November 6, Saturday, 3:30 pm onward:
1. Slot: Introduction and get together
Participants:
Alex, Alice, Anne-Catherine, Emily, Flavio, Florian, Isha, Jan, Leon, Markus, Pierre, Robin, Viktoria
Topics:
presentation of ongoing projects
“Koala” project about academic publishing (“Dismantling an Academic Mafia”) and a guide for the ethical scientist
next Sejny Summer Institute 2022
new summer workshop in Belgium or Greece on ontology in different fields
2. Slot: Talk by John Baez
The talk has been recorded here on YouTube where you can also find the slides.
3./4. Slot: Main topic: Pedagogical approaches to research concepts
Participants:
Alex, Alice, Carlos, Florian, Markus, Pierre, Titouan, … (Guest from Bristol)
Presentation by Alex on “Pedagogical approaches to research concepts”
alexander-thomas-pedagogy-research-concepts.pdf
initial quote:
The goal should be, not to implant in the students’ mind every fact that the teacher knows now; but rather to implant a way of thinking that enables the student, in the future, to learn in one year what the teacher learned in two years. Only in that way can we continue to advance from one generation to the next. – E.T. Jaynes
Examples:
Discussion:
Usual pedagogical contents/research/publications in academia are often bad
Does it makes sense to see pedagogy as something separated from research? (you teach for 50% and then you research for 50%)
Carlos: need to rethink the organization of scientific knowledge. Research papers today basically use the same technology as 400 years ago. One example for good and fast science communication is Twitter, but we should not give full control to private institutions/companies but develop our own decentralized democratic technology/means. Basis for that is to change the “protocol” of how scientific knowledge is documented/organized. Carlos is initiator of an organization that is already concerned with such questions:
SEMF-
Markus: instead of trying to change the whole of science, focus on our own work and community and create the (local) environment where our scientific work (+ life) is joyful and productive (by our own standards); some of those ideas have been summarized in the founding process of the BRCP in
this essay Alice about working hours and mental health: in academia a major drive seems to be “guilt” and feeling responsibility towards your colleagues
Mix of science and politics, especially during the Covid pandemic, is a very dangerous development. Politicians can abuse scientific vocabulary to legitimate their political program.
Follow ups on the discussion after the talk of John Baez:
one of the problems of modern science is the strong focus on particular things (closed systems), neglecting most of the possible side effect; a lot of our technology reflects this very well: usual technological tools are very good in optimizing one particular task, but at the same time might produce tons of waste or other unwanted side effects
Baez presented a science-wise solution: use broader frameworks (such as category theory) that allow to also include more (side)effects
Markus: or embed research into a more social/ecological, instead of a sterile working environment, where side effects can be actually felt