The imPerfect Scientist

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3000 downloads anniversary edition: our podcast edition how to use AI tools for next level science!

Attention natural scientists: Our recent podcast series explores the integration of AI in scientific research. We discuss the utilization of tools like Perplexity, Elicit and ChatGPT for various stages of research and literature review. Moreover, we discuss their use to influence of social media to increase visibility of your research. This episode is another valuable listen for any natural scientist interested in improving research efficiency and understanding the growing role of AI in research.

Content includes:

Immerse yourself in our latest podcast episode exploring the transformative role of artificial intelligence in scientific research. We uncover how AI is reshaping tasks from enhancing text structure to designing experiments and brainstorming ideas with tools like Perplexity, Elicit and ChatGPT. As AI becomes increasingly accessible, discover how it simplifies complex tasks with a single prompt-line approach. We also highlight crucial AI safety measures. This episode is helpful for scientists eager to leverage AI in their work for innovative breakthroughs. Tune in to see the future of scientific work today!

Content

In this podcast we discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on our work as scientists. We talk about how artificial intelligence has been used for things such as automatically segmenting figure panels in research papers, improving text and making it more formal or structured, designing and controlling experiments, brainstorming for projects, summarizing texts, identifying new ideas, making decisions, strategizing, and for aiding in leadership. We also discuss how this technology has become more accessible and that it can assist science in ways that have previously been limited.

1. AI can be used for literature search, summarization, identifying links and gaps, and predicting reviewer comments.

2. AI can assist with scientific research with tools like Perplexity, Elicit and ChatGPT.

3. ChatGPT should not be used for facts as it produces hallucinated output and is not a useful tool for identifying knowledge.

4. Perplexity is a good entry point for becoming knowledgeable about a topic, as it gives citable sources, and allows for highly specific questions to be asked.

5. Elicit is a search engine for scientific literature which provides a table of titles, authors, citations and a single sentence summary for papers.

6. Users can upload their own PDFs and have them read and summarized.

7. AI can help generate arguments and experiments, brainstorm, and generate images.

8. AI gives the user the benefit of bypassing oftentimes tedious sub menus or knobs to enable a single prompt-line approach.

9. AI safety measures like guiding it towards what is desired should be employed.

10. Enjoy! ;-)

Heyyy, folks, we are back!

This is season 2 of our imperfect podcast – thank you for all the positive feedback and your support to boost this journey.

In this podcast season, we, Eva and Daniel, come back to share our experiences as imperfect scientists with a mission: to empower our listeners. We highlight the importance of embracing imperfection, underlining its ubiquity within the our scientific community. And acknowledging that this approach can help reduce anxiety and create a more supportive environment.

Our imperfect scientist podcast serves as a learning platform: for us to learn from our guests but heck, to learn also from each other! How can we own our own personal growth and experiences? Also in Season Two, we will share with you useful tools for coping with challenges faced by scientists. We hope you will find this podcast a valuable resource on our joint journey towards personal and professional growth!

Content contains (but is not limited to 😉):

1. Personal values awareness

2. values re-evaluation experiences

3. Eva's diverse scientific career

4. Values guiding decision-making

5. Self-reflection and personal growth

6. Flexibility, adaptability significance

7. Risk-taking in science

8. Transferable scientific skills

9. Non-traditional career openness

10. Beginner's mindset embrace

Have you ever thought about the term "diversity"? What does it really mean? What implications does it have? 

Chances are you have a notion of what diversity means to *you* and maybe in your scientific working environment. In this episode, we talk with diversity coach and trainer Jule Handschuh and explore the depths of the term diversity. 

In our chat, Jule, Daniel and I talk about: 

As you can see, we again have a fascinating topic with many nuances. Join us for this week's discussion with Jule!

It´s a journey. Similar to any journey, the beginning is important. And the ending. And it´s also important to use effective transportation. Your journey can be a smooth ride.

It´s scientific writing we are talking about.

In this episode of our podcast, we address a topic that is very close to our hearts: how to make scientific writing an effective and smooth journey. 

We discuss on how to start. For many colleagues it´s starting that is hard, starting to write a paper, a grant, a thesis. Simon Sinek suggests to start with asking “why”: Why do I want to get this message across? Why should they fund my research? Why should they listen to this lecture?

The next step in writing is planning and preparing. And believe it or not, the tool for this is the outline. But not just a brief and quick outline. No, sfedit suggests to produce an outline that is 70% of the final product! The outline not only helps you in planning your writing. It will also structure your thoughts (at least it does for me). And it will give you a chance to get feedback early – when it is still easy to fix issues even when they´re fundamental. To make it easier to follow for your audience.

Because your audience is key. If it is hard for them to follow your information, they will not like the science. Unfortunately, this not only applies to your talks or your thesis, but also to your manuscripts and to your grant applications. Therefore it is key to have simple and easy to follow text.

Fortunately, there are effective rules on how to improve text. To improve text, it´s all about connection: connecting subject with verb, previous sentence to subsequent sentence, paragraph to paragraph.

We would even argue that if you work on getting your science across, this will improve your interpretation, your hypotheses, it will improve your science!

Because your science is interesting and relevant. But if you don’t get it across, it will not be visible to your colleagues, to the public.

Would you like to try? To make application of these writing tools easier, we will in addition give away 100 free-access vouchers to our learning platform “How to Write Your Thesis” – how cool is that! (https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-write-your-thesis/?couponCode=75B4799145500648FC4F). If this link takes you to the for-pay access, this means that 100 writing aficionados were faster than you 😉).

If you're anything like us, you've probably wondered at least a few times how you could become more efficient. In this episode, we discuss hacks and tricks to become more efficient with Carsten Rohr. It was a super fun conversation, very enlighting and full of little takeaways. Some of the topics we discuss in this episode include: 

And much more! So listen in and let us know: what is YOUR trick to be more efficient? ;-)

In this episode we talk about the concept of marketing your research. A concept that is quite often viewed with negative connotations in the scientific community. We present you with our perspective of why we believe that marketing your research can in fact be truly empowering and how to view it so that you don't feel uncomfortable doing it. After all, even if you do produce the best research in the world, you still have to be noticed for it, you still have to advertise it and you still have to make it visible, digestible and attractive to your fellow researchers. 

So join us for this fun episode, in which we talk about how to come out of the "marketing/selling is bad" mindset and to apply it to make the most out of your results!

In this episode we talk about a topic that is very widespread among the scientific community - at least the ones we have been exposed to. We talk about “risk and change” and why they are usually perceived with a negative connotation, when in reality they could be perceived as opportunities. As you might imagine, the “word” of the day is “risk aversion” and we try to dissect why as humans we are so risk averse and why we as scientists generally could be in a better position to deal with risk and change and not find it so aversive.

Some of the topics we touch upon in this episode include:

- Why risk and change are generally perceived as something negative

- What kinds of fears hide behind risk aversion

- How to become unbeatable by facing your fears

- Tools you can use to become less risk-averse

- The “who moved my cheese” story and how it applies to choices relating to risk and change

- Why Daniel become almost depressed after getting a tenure position (after being happy for a little while)

- Examples of how Eva got a positive boost out of several experiences that she was scared of or initially put off by

- Some of the benefits of risk and change

- How to work on your mindset to become more resilient

Another episode filled with anecdotes, stories and our best ideas on how to deal with risk and change, what we have learnt along the process in our careers and personal life.

Hope you enjoy it!

After a very timely break...we're back! You'll see why I say timely in a moment, let me just tell you how this episode is packed with super interesting discussions. And that's the case because we had a very special guest for the restart, Dr. Uta Schmidt. Uta has a super interesting personal and professional story, but most importantly, she has the deepest insight into how to handle change and remain resilient in the process. Some of the topics we discuss with Uta in this episode include:

As you can see, it's a long list of fascinating topics that we chatted about, and we hope you can find some inspiration for your newly developed resilience! 🙂

Oh, and before I forget...the topic of this episode came very timely because I (Eva) recently became a mother ❤️ If giving birth and adjusting to life with a new family member does not require resilience, then what does... ;-) - Enjoy listening and let us know what you think!