Besides my interest in cardiovascular epidemiology, I am also interested in several other topics which are only loosely, if anything, related to this topic. Below some of this topics are described.
Causality Blog – The causality blog of the focus group of the Dutch Society of Epidemiology was started as a digital repository of anything digital related to causal inference in epidemiology. Blog posts include announcements for meetings, seminars and courses. The blog also features a journal club section with suggestions for a local journal that wants to focus on causal inference. Please visit this great blog!
– update: I suspended my activities for this blog with my move to Germany. I hope to catch up sometime soon.
Scientific integrity – Recently, several cases of scientific misconduct triggered my attention. Is it caused by the ‘constant pressure of publish or perish’, or are they just a couple of incidents not indicative of a crisis within the scientific community?
Together with the vereniging voor arts onderzoekers (PhD committee at the LUMC) I organised a meeting exploring the wide range of scientific misconduct in order to raise awareness under PhD-students. An article in the LUMC magazine Cicero describes this inspiring meeting (pdf). A group of medical students are busy with the organisation of a couple of meetings to raise awareness under undergraduates. please also refer to the site of the KNAW on this topic with the report of cie Schuyt (pdf). I wrote a small column for the Epistel, the newsletter of the VVE commenting on the report of cie Schuyt.(pdf) A small letter on this subject by me was published in the NRC in 2010.
More recently, i joined forces with some researchers from the Berlin academic community. There are some major changes about to happen including a focus that goes beyond scientific integrity, but also scientific literacy and competence. In short meta-research. More on this very soon(ish).
bob siegerink 