🎙️ The #ResearchCultureUncovered podcast team is excited to share our latest episode featuring Dr. Rob ter Horst — postdoctoral researcher and the creator behind the popular YouTube channel The Quantified Scientist!

Join host Ged Hall as he chats with Rob about his fascinating dual life as a researcher and YouTuber, exploring what it means to treat yourself as an experimental subject, running a YouTube channel at the same time as a demanding postdoc and the benefits and challenges of both.

🔹 Discover how Rob's self-tracking journey with weekly brain MRIs, EEG sleep recordings and testing wearables grew from his scientific curiosity and how that has benefitted both his research and his YouTube identities.

🔹 Learn how Rob used wearable technology data and rigorous testing methods to communicate complex data analysis concepts to a broad public audience, and in his university teaching.

🔹 Hear reflections on the realities of balancing a demanding postdoctoral position with running a growing YouTube channel and podcast — and the honest conversations Rob is having with himself about the long-term sustainability of doing both.

🔹 Explore the cultural challenges researchers face when engaging publicly online, from navigating negative comments and Reddit threads to maintaining scientific integrity while building a content business.

To connect with Rob:

• The Quantified Scientist YouTube channel
• Check out his LinkedIn profile
• His Fit for Science podcast that he co-hosts with Stephan Reichl
• His website https://www.robterhorst.com/

All of our episodes can be accessed via the following playlists:

1. Research Impact with Ged Hall (follow Ged on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
2. Research Impact Heroes with Ged Hall
3. Open Research with Nick Sheppard (follow Nick on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
4. Research Careers with Ruth Winden (follow Ruth on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
5. Research talent management
6. Academic Failure with Taryn Bell (follow Taryn on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
7. Meet the Research Culturositists with Emma Spary (follow Emma on Bluesky and LinkedIn)
8. Research co-production
9. Research evaluation
10. Research leadership
11. Research professionals

Follow us on Bluesky: @researcherdevleeds.bsky.social (new episodes are announced here), @openresleeds.bsky.social, @researchcultureuol.bsky.social

Connect to us on LinkedIn: @ResearchUncoveredPodcast (new episodes are announced here)

Leeds Research Culture links:

1. Researcher Development and Culture Website
2. Our Concordat Implemention plans and progress
3. University of Leeds Research Culture Statement
4. University of Leeds Responsible Metrics Statement
5. University of Leeds Open Research Statement
6. University of Leeds Research Culture Strategy - launched September 2023
7. Public Engagement with Research

If you would like to contribute to a podcast episode get in touch: [email protected]

Ged Hall 00:00:23 Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast.

My name is Ged Hall, and I'm the Head of Researcher Development at the University of Leeds. In this episode, I'm exploring aspects of science and research communication, but not in the standard sense of that phrase when we think of famous people like Hannah Fry, Brian Cox, and Alice Roberts. That's because today my guest is someone who runs a YouTube channel that I've been subscribed to since I started researching which sports watch I should buy to help me maintain my fitness as I age.

So that was one of the, one of the, uh, COVID-era purchases. His name is Dr. Rob ter Horst. Or for those who are also interested in sports watches and other wearables and associated tech, you probably know him as The Quantified Scientist. Now, Rob is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Molecular Medicine in Vi-Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna.

His research interests centre on the potential of omics data, genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics for biological discovery. Now, like me, his starting point on that research path was chemistry. Obviously, I went in a very different way, um, and, and he stayed in a, in, in more of that, uh, more of that trajectory.

Now, after I started following his channel and kind of digging into his background because I thought, "Yay, you're a postdoc scientist. I wonder, I wonder how he's fitting all of this in." So various things started, um, coming into my mind, and one of, one of the things was I was really fascinated by the fact he treats himself as a, an experimental subject.

So he describes it as life logging, and he's a, you know, n equals one in, in all of these experiments. Uh, and he life logs just about everything to be the best version of himself. The other thing that kind of, um, really struck me is since we started this podcast, I know how much time I can spend on it if I, if I let myself.

So I was wondering how he managed to, to produce all of this content, juggling all of those demands of a postdoctoral position as well. And then the other thing that I was, uh, I was really interested in was how he sees his career, uh, developing with those kind of two different identities going hand in hand over the next few years.

So, Rob, thanks for agreeing to chat to me today, and welcome- Of course ... to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast.

Ged Hall 00:02:55 I've given people a thumbnail of what you do, but, you know, yeah, I've probably made all sorts of, uh, even though I'm a, uh, a failed chemist, uh, I've probably made all sorts of, uh, terrible mispronunciations and, uh, I certainly wouldn't try to describe any of those things.

So give people a thumbnail of what your research life is like, uh, and also what your Quantified Scientist identity is.

Um, so different ways of profiling the molecular structure of a cell and linking that to outcomes or to the quality of model systems or, or different things, often with a link to the immune system. Um, so that's sort of my, my postdoc. Um, my PhD was actually relatively similar, but more, uh, also rough phenotype based and linking that to the immune system.

So also how age, sex, seasonality, and omics influenced immune function. Um, so that's I would say my normal Work that is like mostly during the weekdays and a bit during the weekend, but given how much I do, I try to split it a bit into week and weekend. Um, and during my PhD, I actually started tracking myself first out of interest for what I was interested in to learn some things.

But then I also noticed this was a good science communication tool because it's-- I could still do the data analysis, so my focus is, uh, bioinformatics, so I don't do the lab work, but I do the computational work. Um, but usually it's quite hard to explain to my parents first the biology and then moving on to the data analysis, and usually you just explain the biology.

You just explain, "Hey, I'm studying how seasonality affects the immune system. We measure these things called cytokines, which are signaling molecules," and that's like enough for them. I don't have to go into the models I use or, or, or whatever. Um, but I wanted to actually communicate that a little bit. So that's why I started also using that self-tracking data as sort of a tool either in teaching or, um, in science communication as a way of showing people what data analysis is or what graph you could make, what tests you could do without the data being complicated.

Because a graph I made was, for instance, my heart rate versus the music I was listening to. So I had my top ten artists, and you could see which artist I had a higher heart rate for. And then you can also go into explaining causation versus correlation and all these things were, were quite interesting.

So I still have to write to the Guinness World Book of Records, um, because I think I must be the most scanned brain in the world. So we do functional and structural brain MRI every Tuesday morning at eight or eight fifteen, um, since twenty-- since March or so of 2018 with some dropouts due to COVID.

But I think by now it's like two hundred and fifty scans, maybe three hundred. I have to actually look up how many I've gotten. Um, and I do every night EEG recordings for my sleep. Um, I used to fill out a lot of questionnaires. This I've reduced a lot because that's super time-consuming. Questionnaires were the biggest part, and I've moved that more to the wearables and to automatic tracking in addition.

Um, so we're also writing this up as, as papers actually, or they're manuscripts now. Hopefully they will become, become papers. Um, so that's sort of how the research part of the self-tracking became. So that's part two, and part three is the YouTube channel, which came from the research, um, tracking because I wanted to move more towards wearables, and using that data I needed to know which wearable was accurate, and I couldn't find any information online that I trusted.

But I knew I had my own EEG data and my own polysomnography data and my own heart rate data with a chest strap, so I could compare. And then the pandemic hit, and I always had this idea of starting a YouTube channel, and I was like, "Okay, let's just see what happens." Um, and during the pandemic, I had just moved to Vienna, which is where I work now, from the Netherlands, so I had a lot of time on my hands, uh because I was alone in a, in a small room.

Um, so I started making YouTube videos testing these wearables from a more systematic and, I mean, as a catchphrase I use scientific. How scientific N is 1 is is always up for debate, but let's say-

Rob ter Horst 00:07:49 from- with a scientific, um, view to the data

So DC Rainmaker, DesFit- Yeah ... Chase the Summit, you know, all, all guys that, uh, a- and actually all guys interestingly. Um, and, uh, y- yeah, you... When I, when I came across your channel, which was, um, somewhat, mm, can't have been too long after you started then, um, when I... 'Cause I bought my, mine in May 2020, so it can't have been too long after you started.

I thought, "Ah, this guy," you know, obviously all the others do a kind of hint at accuracy in terms of heart rate, hint at... They're, they're much better in terms of accuracy at the GPS side of things. Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, and kinda just mention that they go, it felt about right, the sleep tracking you know, that-

Ged Hall 00:08:52 that was kind of the level of, uh, the level of detail, uh, that they were going. And I kinda go, I'm really enjoying the fact that this is a bit, you know, much more complementary and considered in terms of, in terms of how you were going about it, and much more kind of a scientific method, as you've said.

Like, I give him two or f- two to test each period. Um, but still, it's super limited. So I have some ideas to set up a bigger testing platform where people can submit their data under certain requirements, like there needs to be a heart rate strap and an independent watch so we can compare the two, where you, where the ECG chest strap is generally the most reliable way of measuring heart rate.

So there you can send it out more to the community. For sleep, it's a lot harder. Um, these EEG (ElectoEncephaloGram) devices are 2,000, 3,000 euros so you're not gonna ev- have everybody buy it, and even they are not perfect, um, because you need sort of an algorithm that translates that raw EEG data. And people wouldn't, first of all, know how to run this algorithm, the average person, because you need to, like, use some GitHub repository, and install it, and run it, and, and customise it a little bit.

Um, and I have to also mention here that, of course, even my sleep testing is far from perfect because EEG is not polysomnography, which is the gold standard. I would say EEG is sort of the silver standard. And even polysomnography, if you give two sleep scientists the same raw data- If you just have light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, and wa- and awake time, which are the common sleep stages, likely you will get up to a, let's say, 90% agreement over each 30-second interval.

Like, if you take all 30 seconds, which is what you look at usually overnight, 90% of them would agree between the two, like, as sort of a h- as a sort of a ceiling value. Mm-hmm. Um, because it, there is still some interpretation there that's imperfect.

Um- Mm-hmm ... and so I hadn't understood that. So that's absolutely fascinating because actually when I was preparing, I kind of looked at, uh, you know, just dipped into Wikipedia and kind of what, what, uh, give me a list of scientists who've, um, self-experimented. And, uh, there is a long history of it, you know, in terms of Isaac Newton poking himself in the eye to see the, uh, the effect of pressure on, on vision.

I think he probably decided it hurts, um, is- ... is probably his finding. But, but interestingly, you know, there were some really extreme examples like Joseph Barcroft, who shut himself and his dog in a chamber to test the effects of hydrogen cyanide. Poor dog died. I don't think he did, not immediately anyway.

He, uh, the-- I think there were some concerns that it might have led to further on in his life the, uh, his early demise. And then Werner Forssmann, this was another, the wonderful one that kind of fascinated me. He first demonstrated cardiac catheterisation by actually inserting, um, the catheter into his own brachial vein and then guiding it into his own heart, and you kinda go, "That's just bonkers."

Um- Mm-hmm ... now your self-experimentation is way less extreme than that. But, um, can you tell us why, you know, what drove you to kind of, um, choose to do this? And, uh, you know, just give us all your, all those motivations about why you, why you started off on that path.

But I think at some point it's scientific interest because we just-- nobody has scanned a brain over a decade, for instance, and we-- I actually would be interested to see what actually changes as you age, but also as-- because we do it every week, we can see if I have a breakup or if I have, like, a flu or whatever.

Probably I'm not in the machine during the flu, but afterwards, like, what changes with the brain? Or even if I have a bad night of sleep, what, what changes? And now we can do it consistently to get rid of any confounding factors because hopefully at least there will be enough bad nights of sleep that don't perfectly correlate with the confounders that we can at least somewhat tell those apart.

Um, so it, I think it started as somewhat self-interest and science communication, but then also moved For me, because of to the extent that I do it, um, is not useful for most people because you cannot do anything with a current brain MRI. Like, you're not gonna change your life based on those results.

Rob ter Horst 00:13:57 Um, so partially it's also just now that I did it for so long, it would be a waste not to continue or try to continue for at least a decade, both because then you have enough data to do something with. Like, if you, if you end up with, let's say, 300 MRIs in the end, that's ... Or, or 400 maybe if we do a decade with some dropouts, um, that's enough to make conclusions that we can hopefully also translate to hypothesis we can test in a larger group of people.

Um, and I think partially in, in moments it also almost became part of my identity to be this person who did that, which I don't know if that's healthy or not. Um, but in those moments I think that that was partially why I kept being driven because that was just what I did. Um, I don't know how else to, to explain it.

Rob ter Horst 00:15:16 Yeah, for sure. And yeah, the, the hard thing for me is that I'm not a brain expert, so I always rely- Mm ... on my colleagues to analyse it. So we had some minor results now already, but now the person who's analysing it is on maternity leave, so I have to wait until she's back, um, to get the final results.

Now, um, I used to work at the University of Nottingham, which is, which is where MRI was, um, was first demonstrated. And, um, I think, I, I think I was in one of their first, you know, not quite the first thing that, uh, uh, first, uh, uh, uh, instrument where they, where they demonstrated it, but it was a fairly, you know

It certainly didn't look like the ones you see at the hospital and, you know, with nice, nice plastic and, you know, fairly ... And it was ... So I'm really-- I found it I, I suffer a little bit from the claustrophobia, and, uh, so I'm very, very, um, envious of you being able to kind of put up with that so regularly in your life 'cause I, I hated every minute of it.

Ged Hall 00:16:45 Yeah, yeah. Now I think I noticed that, uh, on one of your, um, either on the, on your webpage, uh, on your website, um, or in some of the descriptions of your social channels, that you can spend up to kind of, uh, 11 hours a week and things like that, uh, going through these various tests. Um, and you must also be doing probably even more in terms of actually then, um, creating content from the, from those tests, you know, recording your thoughts about them and, uh, and as you said, the accuracy of different pieces of kit that you've been using.

And, um, I'm guessing, you know, that's a considerable cost burden as well having all of this kit, um, that, uh, that you have to, you have to take on board to kind of satisfy this curiosity of, of yours. So, uh, have you, has... You know, obviously there's been some benefit in terms of, you know, actually your research interests spewing out into this new, um, new YouTube, um, and other platforms actually.

You're, you've started a podcast recently, um, and you've got a website that, uh, that describes all your, um, a lot of your reviews of, of kits that you've, you've just started as well. So I just wondered in terms of, like, the, the crossover benefits between those two identities.

So I've now co-authored a few, like one- Man-- Well, a few manuscripts, I would say. One is submitted. We still have to wait. And also some papers where I actually use my self-tracking... Either my self-tracking data or, uh, because of my expertise, I was contacted by different research groups like sleep labs to help them with a study.

So recently we did a big validation study of wearables. Um, and there I actually get papers and citations and everything just from that sort of tracking part. So it crosses over in that way that it helps my research life to be involved in this wearable community. But of course, it's not as molecular as I'm normally researching.

Um, and in terms of time balance, it's, it's hard sometimes. I think what I'm doing now in terms of hours is not sustainable for another decade. It's, it's honestly too, too much, and I have to figure out a better way of going about it. For the, for the sort of scientific self-tracking, I've reduced the hours, so it's not...

That was just like the... That, that was just for the research part. So questionnaires, uh, every morning and evening blood pressure, every morning and evening reaction speed, every morning and evening a urine test. Like, all these things I used to do. This I mostly got rid of. I have the MRIs, the sleep EEGs, and wearables, and maybe some minor questionnaires.

So maybe by now just the scientific self-tracking is a few hours per week, like let's say four. Um, the YouTube part, the testing, not counting the sports I have to do, that's probably 30 hours a week or something, or 25. Um, and then of course I have my normal job where I do think compared to some other postdocs, I don't spend more than 45 hours or so on the job just because it doesn't fit in the week.

Um, of course, then I don't necessarily count the sleep study as my normal work. So I mean, it all to a degree benefits from each other. And luckily now I get to make some income from it so I can hire an editor and this kind of stuff, so that makes life a bit easier. But what ends up happening is the moment I have an editor I can just make more videos.

Like that's- Yes. I'd still spend roughly the same amount of time. I just have more output now. But my dream is to grow it enough that I can hire more people for more things, um, so that I can get rid of the tasks that are not as fun and also create a bigger testing platform where It's even more reliable and even more, um, broadly tested.

Rob ter Horst 00:21:09 Yeah, I think so. I mean, officially it's registered as a business- Yeah ... already. Yeah, yeah. Because any income needs to be, um, registered in Austria as a, as a business, basically. Um, so no, for sure.

And the, I have some rules that I would n- that in terms of how I can generate income, like I don't take sponsorships directly- Yeah ... from any brand that I ever review. Um, I- the most I do is an affiliate link, but that can never influence my testing, so I don't filter the data. Mm-hmm. If it's the, if the, if I have an affiliate link for, let's say, the WHOOP strap, if the next generation isn't good, the data will show that, and I cannot go around that, and I cannot filter the data.

Mm-hmm. I just, I always use all data, and I don't know how other reviewers do it, but I, I can imagine that if there is sort of an incentive to show the best run or the best ride, if you're, if you want even the company to send you their products, um, because if you get them before release, you get three, four times the views, which means three, four times the money.

Um, and I'm not saying anybody does this, but that this incentive is potentially there. And for me, all my code and scripts are just set up to extract all the data, to run the code, and the data is just what it is. Mm-hmm. Only the reference data I check if there's any errors in it to make sure that there's no, like some nights the EEG electrode goes loose.

This data, I could run through it, but you would get nonsense.

Don't we engage? Is it right for us to be there? Is it wrong for us to be there?" So there was a, there were quite a lot of, I suppose, negative views of it being kind of a time sink and all of those sorts of things. Um, so c- what, what kind of reactions do you get to, um, to, you know, to that side of your persona, uh, from your research colleagues, either internationally, people you meet, um, at conferences, um, and, and more locally in your group?

There's a name for this in English, I think. Um-

Rob ter Horst 00:23:58 Yeah. Um, I think he, for instance, as a person is less interested in this. So he would- Yeah ... be fine with it, but he would not care as much. Whereas, um, my cur- the current director of the institute, the Centre for Molecular Medicine, he's actually very interested in this.

So it really depends on the personality- Mm-hmm ... um, of the person still. But generally the res- the responses of the community have been positive. I think the, the main negative reactions you get is in YouTube comments. Even though the vast majority is positive, there will always be people who say, "This is not science.

This is not real science because it's N is 1." And of course I'm very open about this, but as a title I just need to somehow, um, like for a YouTube title to make ... I need to somehow distinguish what I do from what the others do. And I think scientific review sort of at least relatively says what it is compared to the other reviews.

Even though of course it's not perfect, but- Mm. And it's less perfect than a peer review. It's for sure less perfect than a peer-reviewed piece of work.

Rob ter Horst 00:25:00 But this is just not feasible to do every week, and also would be too slow to be useful for people. So I think YouTube comments are the main place, or actually GitHub is

Like I don't go ... Or, um, sorry, um, Reddit. I don't go to Reddit anymore just because people just Take everything to the extreme and I've heard things like, "His girlfriend works as Apple." That is what I've heard. I mean, I don't have a girlfriend at the moment, but I've never had a girlfriend who worked at Apple.

But just if you're positive about a brand, they assume you have some conflict of interest. Mm-hmm. If you're negative about a brand, they assume you have some bad intentions, and I just show the data and people don't necessarily always like it.

Um, yeah, so, so interestingly, how, how do you deal with those negative perceptions? 'Cause I know, uh, you know, some on some of the channels the, you know, the person running that channel says, "I don't read the comments, you know, I just ignore them in- completely. So if you wanna get in touch with me, get in touch by, you know, his email is there- Yeah, yeah

if you, if you want to get in touch with him." So how, what, what, what's your, um, I guess, mechanism process for, for kinda handling those?

Ged Hall 00:26:37 Mm.

So it's like, uh, there it is very biased towards people who want to watch my content, so this is kind of okay. I do, for the last month or so, watch less of the comments just because it's some, just those few negative ones stand out so much from the positive that it just- It affects your day for maybe 5 or 10 minutes, but that's enough that it's, uh, that it's almost not worth it.

And it's sort of sad that this also means I answer less comments at the moment.

Rob ter Horst 00:27:18 Just because it's an extra burden that somehow, at the moment, because I had a busy month, I couldn't put on top. Um, but in general, I'm not too hurt by it. I think Reddit is just there, all the negative peoples combine, and they don't know you.

They wouldn't say this to your face, but they do say it on Reddit with things that don't... Like, your feeling in that moment is, "This is not true. I need to respond to this," but I don't. Mm. Um, because they u- they say, like, untruths. Like for instance, they-- I remember one comment from a while ago where the person said, "He's not a real scientist.

Looked at it, look at his LinkedIn." Um, thinking, what do you see on my LinkedIn that makes me not a real scientist? I have had publications. Um, I have a high, I have a decent high H-index. Not that that's in any way perfect, but I mean, there's so much there that shows that I do actual research with output.

Um, there are always people who do better, there's always people who do worse, but given where I am, I don't think I'm in the lower end. And then you feel like I should defend myself, but I won't because it's just not worth it. You're, you're ending it in this sort of spiral. I remember I did this in the beginning.

In a YouTube comment, there was one lady from some university who was adamant that N is one research just cannot be good. And I tried to discuss with her. I was very cordial, but there was just so much vile or bile, I don't know how you say this in English, coming from it, that there was just, there was no reasoning with this person.

And I, I asked- Mm ... she s- said who she was. I could check her LinkedIn. She's a, a researcher who seems to have a good position and, and I'm-- don't understand how a researcher... I always hope in our community that at least we can communicate about facts and be, and have our opinions, but be Open and nice enough about it that it doesn't result in this very extreme, um, yeah, negative.

Where you can say it in multiple ways, and you can also try at least to stand in another person's shoes.

You know? And I think we sometimes have that, um, have that, uh, same positive bias to, to academia, that we kind of go, "It's nicer than the rest of the world." Where actually it's just, it is just the rest of the world in a microcosm. Yeah. So you can, you can have those negative people. You know, we've all heard the horrible reviewer two stories, you know, kind of like, "This is rubbish," um, or things much worse than that in, in comments, um, and the like.

Um, and it, it, it, it does just happen. And, uh, you know, I'm J- um, I am just kind of slightly fascinated in terms of how we defend ourselves, in terms of not just whether we engage with it, but whether we, what we do to protect ourselves psychologically from them.

If somebody says, "Your camera quality is horrible. It's the worst I've ever seen," and here I'm holding it back for the podcast, the language. Then instead of taking all that sort, that negative, you can also say, "Okay, my camera quality, is it actually bad? Okay, maybe I can improve something." And I think- Mm

that is ideally what you would do, and if somebody's just being negative for being negative, or they have such a strong opinion that, uh, especially if that opinion cannot be changed by facts, then it's, you can just ignore it. It- Yeah ... I don't know, the, the general saying is, a strong opinion loosely held, I think, where if you cannot change your opinion based on facts, then what are we doing?

Rob ter Horst 00:31:31 Yeah ...

Rob ter Horst 00:31:53 Yeah. I'm considering now how to go about it. I think honestly what will be very hard for me is to have a full professorship and the YouTube channel if they are not directly connected to each other in some way. Mm-hmm. Um, just- Academia has so much competition that either you need to be a brilliant person, which I don't think I am, or you just need to work very hard to...

I mean, we collaborate, but in the end we compete for grants, for everything. You need to put in 70, 60, 80-hour workweeks regularly, um, and some people do it always. And doing that for my full scientific job next to a YouTube channel is just infeasible, I think. So either I find some way of getting grants that combines both in a very nice way, um, but there I need to think very well about both the financial aspect as in if there's any profit, where does it go to?

Can it, like, does it need to be, uh, a nonprofit? I don't know exactly how this would work. Um, I've looked into it just a little bit. Or I could leave academia. That would be another option still. Try-- I would always be involved. There would always be some papers coming out, but not to have it as the main job and financially I could do it at the moment based on the YouTube income.

So it's, there is that, that option, but it's a very unstable income. Like it could drop. Uh, but then again, I could also be fired. You never know, right? Like life is an uncertain thing. I think taking no risks is also a risk. Um, I hope I can combine it somehow. I just think for me it will be very hard to be full professor if it isn't a direct connection.

Like if the research part doesn't involve wearables to a large degree, um, and even then it will be hard. So that's more of a personal philosophical thing that I'm trying to figure out- Mm-hmm ... is how my, how many hours am I willing to keep putting into Both these things and because at the mo- what I'm doing now is just not sustainable in the long run.

and their research trajectory can keep, can keep, um, pushing the, the frontier of the company forward in terms of what its, uh, products, if that's what it's, uh, producing can, can do. Um, but you know, I've, I've known people who kind of go, "No, I'm just going 100% into the company," or, "No, I'm gonna sell and go 100% back into the, back into academia," because, you know, that's-- either of those choices is right, whichever is right for, for the person.

So, um, a, a colleague of, of mine from the University of Sheffield, he's just, uh, he's just left Sheffield, and he's just started his own, um, podcast called Under Review. Um, so I'm gonna slightly steal his idea here. So what would, what would you out of the, you know, to, to help you make that kind of life where you're able to do both work, what would you bin from academia?

Ged Hall 00:35:47 Yeah.

And that I don't have the solution there because many smarter people have thought about this. But just being on review committees, reviewing papers, all these kinds of things, I see how much time they take. Um, and you sort of almost need to do them to build your network. Um, and they are essential for how we have devised this whole scientific system.

But they cost so much extra time that, that takes away from normal research, um, that I would wish there, there would be some other way, um, of doing this. Um, and I think it has worked because there's both pressure just generally for you to succeed that way, and we've had many people that were just really invested and really intrinsically motivated to make science as good as possible.

But still, it took away from their real personal research, and maybe it helped them a bit by getting new ideas. But if you're reviewing ERC (European Research Council) grants or if you're reviewing a lot of papers for Nature or Science or also the sub journals, like it still costs a lot of time. It-- And, uh, I, I don't know if the editor always does everything with all the comments you, you, you give.

It just costs a lot of time, and, um, you're not getting paid for it. And I think there's some initiatives to make reviewing papers paid to a degree, but it doesn't really work that well at the moment. You almost need to have paid full-time reviewers that are really well-read into a field. Mm-hmm. Um, but who wants to do that?

Are there people who 'cause it almost feels like a, a step back for some people probably from doing your own research. But it would be a, a, a valid nine-to-five job, I think, for people who don't actually want to pursue this academic career. And in addition to all of that, there's things like hosting guests, like visiting research, like everything costs time.

And I think that, you know, that ends up kind of just spinning the machine faster and faster. Yeah. And, uh, uh, which is generating all those time pressures. Um, but yeah, uh, hopefully we'll find an answer at some point, uh, down the line and that, uh, and that you're able to balance those two, um, those two hopes for the future.

Um, so I think that's, that would be the benefit that if you get-- if I stay in academia, the grants that you get are sufficient to hire people, whereas now the YouTube part, um, I can hire an editor, but this is, let's say I pay him 2,000 euros a month. That's like maybe the average. That's still, it's st- it's still just a small sal- Like, he's not working full-time for me.

He's just a freelancer. If you compare that to hiring three people full-time, that's a different order of magnitude.

Um, I've really enjoyed our chat, and it's great to find out so much useful information from your channel for me personally. You know, that's been, that's been fantastic, so thank you for that, and I'll leave you to say goodbye to the listeners.

Intro 00:40:31 Thanks for listening to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast.

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