How would you feel about this statement?

“Science is not about finding out the truth”

Provocative, isn’t it? ;-) - So is our topic today and our guest Andrew Westhoff, but bear with us because this episode is full of useful and down-to-earth advice on how to approach your research life and how to communicate your science in a non-conventional yet super effective way!

I have to admit that at first my mind rejected this statement for being bold and untrue. But here’s a bit more context:

“Science is not about finding out the truth, but about building useful models”

That made a bit more sense. At the end of the day, we do build hypotheses and models based on our observations and then challenge our own and others’ models agains new evidence. Then we build new models, challenge old ones and this is a never-ending circule that is at the core of scientific advancement.

Today’s episode is all about breaking dogmas in how to think about your research, an in particular about how to think about it and how to communicate it. Our guest is Andrew Westhoff and it is totally worth it to listen to how he thinks of these topics.

Some of the topics we discuss today include:

• Why Andrew believes that “Homo sapiens” is a terrible designation for our species, both the “homo” and the “sapiens” and what a better designation might be


• What the “Pan narrans” is and how it is relevant for your research


• What processed of induction, deduction and abduction are and how to use them in your daily work in the lab


• Why Andrew starts his lectures on glioblastoma talking about Scottish battles for independence


• Why Andrew recommends that his PhD students read a couple of Agatha Christie novels before starting to write their dissertation


• How detective stories can be used as a guide to write scientific papers that your readers will actually remember


• Why throwing off people can be a fantastic tool to get attention AND to get your audience to be open-minded and much more likely to collaborate

So you see, once more a rather unconventional chat full of surprises and usable skills and tools you can test in your every lab life!

Looking forward to your feedback :-)