What will the future of science look like? In this podcast, Philipp Koellinger sits down with world-class scientists to discuss where the scientific enterprise is broken today, and how we can fix it tomorrow.
#16 Richard Sever: The History and Future of Preprints and Scientific Validation
This episode with Richard Sever, co-founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv, focuses on preprints. How come they have been so widely adopted as a means of disseminating research? Which factors helped, and what made the process difficult? We also discuss the place (and time) of scientific validation in a scientific system where work is published and shared rapidly, and independently, without in-depth review.
3 Apr 2024
#15 James Zou: Collaborating with AI
In this episode, we talked to Professor James Zou, who brought us his perspective on how academia might collaborate with AI. He covered how AI could help us ask better questions instead of answering them, how they can translate information for different levels of expertise, and how we can use them to make our feedback more diverse and specific instead of general. After that, we explored how AI is already changing science by increasing the number of papers, creating more general GPT-generated reviews, and also making writing a more accessible task for incoming PhDs.
To top it off, we all agreed that we would absolutely go to an AI-generated concert (especially if there were robots).
James Zou is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Data Science (https://med.stanford.edu/dbds.html) and, by courtesy, of Computer Science (https://cs.stanford.edu/) and Electrical Engineering (https://ee.stanford.edu/) at Stanford University (http://www.stanford.edu/). He works on making machine learning more reliable, human-compatible and statistically rigorous, and is especially interested in applications in human disease and health (https://sites.google.com/site/jamesyzou/publications#compbio). Several of his algorithms are widely used in tech and biotech industries.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out our other seminars here. (https://www.descifoundation.org/futureofscience)
2 Apr 2024
#14 James Evans: Designing Innovative Research Ecosystems
How does innovation work? Can we design systems that optimize for innovative ideas and solutions? James Evans has been researching rich digital twins of knowledge ecosystems like science and Wikipedia. A key finding of his work is that diversity is the prime driver of innovation. In the episode we discuss which dimensions of diversity matter, and whether there is an optimal amount of diversity. We also cover how AI might help diversify the scientific idea space, and debate whether it may eventually replace human scientists.
Professor James Evans is the Director of Knowledge Lab, Professor of Sociology, Faculty Director of the Computational Social Science program, and member of the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the University of Chicago. He is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His research focuses on the collective system of thinking and knowing, ranging from the distribution of attention and intuition, the origin of ideas and shared habits of reasoning to processes of agreement (and dispute), accumulation of certainty (and doubt), and the texture–novelty, ambiguity, topology–of human understanding. He is especially interested in innovation–how new ideas and technologies emerge–and the role that social and technical institutions (e.g., the Internet, markets, collaborations) play in collective cognition and discovery.
20 Nov 2023
#12 Taylor Oshan: Decentralizing Geospatial Data
Taylor Oshan (https://geog.umd.edu/facultyprofile/oshan/taylor) has been exploring how use and take advantage of decentralized infrastructure like IPFS and Filecoin for geospatial data. In this podcast we learn what geospatial data actually is - rumor has it it’s about 60% of all data! Then Taylor explains why decentralizing is an important effort and how it can increase the robustness as well as efficiency of data storage and access.
Taylor is a geographic information scientist at the University of Maryland and part of the Easier Data Initiative (https://easierdata.org/).
19 Oct 2023
#11 Allison Duettmann: Predicting progress, interdisciplinarity, and the biggest risks for humanity
Allison Duettmann is the president and CEO of Foresight Insitute (foresight.org), a non-profit that’s focused on the beneficial development of high-impact technologies.
In this episode, Allison tells us about the history behind Foresight, and why it was started in the first place.
Then we talk about predicting progress: Is that even possible? Are we making enough progress? Too much? And what drives progress, anyways?
We also cover the opportunities of interdisciplinary collaboration to solve humanity’s biggest problems – and the difficulties that researchers encounter when attempting this.
Allison also tells us her personal opinion on what the biggest opportunities and risks that are facing humanity are.
Learn more about us at descifoundation.org (descifoundation.org)
14 Jun 2023
#10 Daniel Hook: Nature's Innovation Engine
In this episode, we sat down with Daniel Hook (https://twitter.com/danielintheory?lang=en) CEO of Digital Science (https://www.digital-science.com/). Digital Science is a company that invests in software companies servicing researchers and research institutions. Daniel shared his personal journey from being a researcher in theoretical physics to starting his own software company to now leading innovation in the scientific tooling space with Digital Science. We also talked about the philosophy and ground revision behind this company, as well as what Daniel thinks the future of science should look like.
2 May 2023
#9 Davide Grossi: The State of Peer Review and Alternative, Better Mechanisms
In this episode we talked to Davide Grossi about peer review. Davide is a decision making and mechanism design researcher at University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam.
We first covered the state of peer review today: How it’s being done and how it’s going wrong – Davide likens the outcome of reviews to a lottery: Whether you get a positive or negative review seems to depend more on chance than on the quality of your work.
Then we dove into potential solutions and new designs for a fairer and more effective peer review system. Besides reducing the amount of reviews in general, Davide suggested some interesting new avenues for exploration when it comes to how we decide which proposals and publications get the limelight or funding.
There’s a lot more to be done before we find the “best” way to perform peer review. Davide is calling for a science of peer review to systematically engage with the design choices around this pillar of scientific integrity.
Watch the full seminar: https://youtu.be/jq_9BqwMK_U
Sign up for future seminars: https://descifoundation.org/seminar
Support DeSci Foundation: https://descifoundation.org/donate
11 Apr 2023
#8 Josh Nicholson: Metrics, Incentives, Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Science
Josh Nicholson is co-founder and CEO of Scite (scite.ai), a deep learning platform that evaluates the reliability of scientific claims by citation analysis. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of the Winnower (acquired 2016) and CEO of Authorea (acquired 2018 by Atypon), two companies aimed at improving how scientists publish and collaborate. He holds a PhD in cell biology from Virginia Tech, where his research focused on the effects of aneuploidy on chromosome segregation in cancer.
In this episode, we dove deep into metrics: Which stats should you optimize for to progress in your career as a scientist? And how can this inevitable culture of optimizing for one-dimensional metrics hurt the pursuit for truth? Josh told us about Scite, a tool that helps researchers make sense of the literature by differentiating between supporting and contrasting citations of a paper, versus just surfacing the raw citation count. We discussed how alternative metrics like Site can create a more positive, constructive optimization game.
We also talked about the culture of innovation in the scientific ecosystem that is supposed to be the cradle of new ideas: does the ecosystem really encourage innovative, new, maybe even controversial ideas? And what’s it like trying to change the legacy system as a new startup?
Sign up for upcoming seminars: descifoundation.org/seminar (descifoundation.org/seminar)
Support the DeSci Foundation with a donation: descifoundation.org/donate (descifoundation.org/donate)
Explore more Future of Science content: linktr.ee/futureofscience (linktr.ee/futureofscience)
22 Mar 2023
#5 Juan Benet: Preserving Knowledge, Jumpstarting Civilization, and Multiplanetary Species
Juan Benet started multiple highly influential projects in the crypto world, like IPFS (https://ipfs.tech/) and Filecoin (https://filecoin.io/). He started his company Protocol Labs (https://protocol.ai/) to build out further technologies to aid the preservation, spread, and usage of information.
In this episode, we talked about the grand ideas behind the technologies Juan and his network have been building over the past decade. Some of the questions we discussed included: How do you store information over long periods of time, like really long as in 10s of thousands, or even millions of years? How much information do we need in which format in order to be able to jumpstart civilization after a collapse? And how can we transfer information in a multi-planetary society?
Lastly, we also learned how many hours of sleep Juan needs and, importantly, he told us – without missing a beat – what his spirit animal is.
This podcast is a follow-up conversation to Juan's Future of Science Seminar. You can watch the recording here. (https://youtu.be/5ORvbCIW39o)
Sign up to future seminars here. (https://descifoundation.org/seminar)
Support the DeSci Foundation by making a donation here. (https://descifoundation.org/donate)
8 Mar 2023
#7 James Boyd: Fully Automated Science, Cyborg Scientists, Wolfram Institute, & Ducks
James Boyd co-founded the Wolfram Institute (https://www.wolframinstitute.org/) together with Stephen Wolfram in order to advance physics, mathematics, and other scientific disciplines through the strategic use of computational technology.
In this podcast, Philipp and Carla dig a little deeper into James' views on a future in which science is done automatically. What will that look like? What's the role of humans in this future? Oh, and what in the world is a cyborg scientist?! They discuss transhumanism, personal growth, and spirit animals.
This conversation is a follow-up to James' Future of Science Seminar. Watch the recording here. (https://youtu.be/KTftQlzDcEs)
Sign up to upcoming Future of Science Seminars here. (https://descifoundation.org/seminars)
Support the DeSci Foundation by donating towards the acceleration of scientific progress here. (https://descifoundation.org/donate)
12 Feb 2023
#6 Marcus Munafo: Accelerating grass-roots movements to advance open research
In this conversation with Marcus Munafo, we covered how Marcus and others built the UK Reproducibility Network (https://www.ukrn.org/) and are driving the adoption of open research practices. We debated whether issues in science are mostly due to well-intentioned behavior by humanly-flawed individuals in a suboptimal environment or whether it’s more selfish individuals practicing outright fraud. Spoiler: We’re not so sure. We also discussed whether change in science needs top-down policies or whether these can even harm the cause.
This podcast is a follow-up conversation to Marcus' Future of Science Seminar (https://youtu.be/IQpTALd8RDc). You can watch all episodes of the seminar here (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrER0V_Xme6NjO8d3z4luIEd8yP7kwOfV), and sign up to upcoming seminars here (https://descifoundation.org/seminar).
21 Dec 2022
#4 David Aronchick: Decentralized compute for science
We sat down with David Aronchick, head of R&D at Protocol Labs, to talk about compute over data - the ability to run an analysis right where your data is without having to move it around.
In this episode: Learn why moving data from one server to another for analysis is such a pain, how compute over data could change the game for data security and privacy, and how compute over data based on web3 primitives can increase collaboration, data sharing, and reproducibility in science.
Check out David's Future of Science Seminar here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn4L74ElR7E&t=14s).
Check the schedule (https://descifoundation.org/seminar) and sign up for upcoming live seminars!
28 Nov 2022
#3 Erik Schultes: Making scientific data machine-actionable
Philipp sat down with Erik Schultes, FAIR Implementation Leaad at the Go FAIR Foundation, to talk about FAIR data (= findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable).
In this episode: How FAIR data enables machine-actionability, Sci-Fi futures powered by an internet full of FAIR digital objects, the role of data stewards, the origin of the FAIR acronym, fast adoption in institutional settings, the real cost of not implementing FAIR, and that one time the banking sector tried to buy the internet.
This podcast is a follow-up conversation to Erik's Future of Science Seminar. You can watch the full seminar here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8BWzSfQWvo).
Sign up for upcoming seminars: https://descifoundation.org/seminars
22 Nov 2022
#2 Gideon Nave: How Oxytocin Research Got Out of Hand
In this episode, we cover what happens when research becomes trendy, why trends seem to overrule scientific rigor, and how even one of the original authors debunking their own findings cannot put the genie back into the bottle.
Behavioral neuroscientists have shown that the neuropeptide oxytocin plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in nonhuman mammals. Inspired by this initial research, many social scientists proceeded to examine the associations of oxytocin with trust in humans over the past decade. In a large-scale review, Gideon and his colleagues have dissected the current oxytocin research to understand whether findings are robust and replicable. Turns out, they are not. However, even though the findings were established to be false, they keep propagating throughout the scientific record.
This podcast is a follow-on conversation to Gideon's Future of Science Seminar. You can watch the full seminar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q7rij0Wv5g&t=2s
Check out upcoming seminars at https://descifoundation.org/seminars
If you enjoy this episode, please consider rating, reviewing, and subscribing to this podcast. Thanks!
30 Sept 2022
#1 Gustav Nilsonne: Raising Quality Standards for the Scientific Record
This episodes covers neuroscientist and metascientist Gustav Nilsonne (https://nilsonne.net/about/)'s journey to becoming a metascientist, his vision for a systematic quality review in scientific publishing, and how the incentives shaping today's academic systems lead to low-quality research.
If you enjoy this episode, please give us a review and consider subscribing to the podcast. This helps us reach more science enthusiasts.
Sign up for the next Future of Science Seminar: https://descifoundation.org/seminar
Join the conversation with Gustav happening on Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/descifoundation/shared_invite/zt-1g6qtopxx-ogiR3KYloQWvMG3sCjGzAg
DeSci Foundation: https://descifoundation.org
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