Thank you Chairman, and warm thanks to all the friends, family, and colleagues tuning in from their respective quarantines. Welcome to my living room.
I have been thinking about what to tell you right now for quite a while.
Five and a half years ago, I excitedly started my research career at Tilburg University ā today I regretfully need to say I have left university life/academia and am trying to continue my scientific work otherwise.
The dissertation tells only part of the story between those two moments ā between the excitement of entering academia and the need to leave it, at least for a while.
It doesnāt tell you that some of the reasons for leaving are listening to me speak, right now.
It doesnāt tell you how disappointing it was to experience power abuse repeatedly ā the repeated punching down the ladder.
It doesnāt tell you that when I tried to raise these issues, people would make me doubt whether these were issues to begin with.
It doesnāt tell you that I had to overcome depression because of how I was treated.
But the dissertation also doesnāt share the inordinate amounts of support I received from others that are listening right now.
ā the communal experience among my peers of the rotten parts of how we work with one another.
ā the deeply rooted feeling that something has to give; things have to change.
So yea, I could tell you that my research indicated
that we cannot reasonably detect and correct scientific fraud or questionable research practices at a large scale
that even if we could detect and correct, publishers donāt allow us to do so without their corporate consent
that we can address many of the problems of how research is done by changing how we communicate it ā by no longer allowing the format of the publication and its publishers to dictate our work
but that would be an incomplete summary of my PhD.
I would need to add
That questionable academic practices like power abuse, sexism, racism, and gaslighting are subtle, pervasive, and impactful
That mental health issues among doctoral candidates are real, prevalent, and preventable
That good people, especially women and non-white men, are leaving academia because of itās systemic issues
And that, that is definitely not sustainable.
This is not just the way things are.
Itās how things have been built and we reproduce it with our everyday choices.
It is how things are, but not how they have to remain.
We need to build our own futures, because nothing about the future is usual or determined.
Itās in these historic times of the coronavirus pandemic that we see the illusions of ābusiness as usualā evaporate before our very eyes.
It is under the ābusiness as usualā argument that we were told we cannot do PhD defenses online.
It is under the ābusiness as usualā argument that access to research is reserved for those with money.
It is under the ābusiness as usualā argument that changing the system from within is the only way to effect true change.
I disagree with that business as usual, because it serves those who run the business. The few who run it are given a head start at the behest of the many.
Also, business as usual isnāt returning anytime soon
The International Monetary Fund says weāre in the worst financial crisis since 1929 due to the pandemic. Theyāre calling it the Great Lockdown. Itās worse than 2008ā2009.
Prolonged or intermittent physical distancing due to the coronavirus may be with us until at least 2022, researchers wrote in an article published just this Tuesday.
The climate crisis is still here as well and setting us up for ruin of unfathomable size. The Doomsday Clock, set by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, is the closest to midnight itās ever been because of it.
These societal crises will multiply each other.
So, I proclaim, without any authority: Business as usual is dead.
And make no mistake: These societal crises will amplify the issues in science as well ā potentially making it even less sustainable.
If we donāt do anything, itāll get worse in many ways. One example is that government spending to combat pandemic impact will force governments to further cut spending elsewhere, like university budgets.
The skirmish for resources will further intensify academic competition, and I donāt think that will do our mental health or our research any good to say the least.
If we opt for piecemeal reform of the current system, we might end up with improved bits and pieces here and there, but weāll miss the intersection and scope of the issues, to the detriment of us all.
So I ask you: Are these issues so innate to our current system, things that are so deeply rooted itās harder to reform current institutions than to build our own alongside them? I think so.
After all, we canāt reform a horse into a car.
Which brings me full circle: Iāve left academia because I donāt see a road to sustainable science without radical change. And for me, academia isnāt the place where that will start.
Iāve tried the limited reform, and it was the cause of some of the power abuse. It was rejected under the ābusiness as usualā argument.
Iāve tried lobbying for better policy that permits access to knowledge for everyone.
I donāt see a sustainable science coming out of the meaningless game of excellence, publishing, and grant writing.
What my research indicated is that detecting and correcting issues in science, is too difficult to be sustainable. What my research also indicated, is that going back to the drawing board allows us to tackle issues in a much more straightforward, simplistic, and encompassing manner.
And if thereās an anecdotal thing Iāve learned: People want futures they can be a part of and experience, not just ones to think about and fight for.
So thatās what I am doing. Together with a community of radicals, I am building things people can use to improve their science. Here we are implementing the results of my PhD research into a for-profit worker cooperative, where the money thatās put in doesnāt go in the pockets of a few but is reinvested for social benefit.
We need to democratise research work, in all its ways, for a sustainable science.