De Omslag

English Hans Radder is emeritus professor of science and technology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and an active member of H.NU: a platform that aims to revise the current Dutch academic system. In the lecture Radder puts forward an analysis how academia has become more commodified, both in terms of research and education. Commodification is a process that is not limited to, but goes hand in hand with financialisation and commercialisation. Radder will also shed light onto how these processes can be assessed and eventually countered from within the university.  Download the slides of this presentation here.

Cultural psychologist dr. Ruud Abma is associated with the Social Sciences department of Utrecht University (ASW) and the Descartes Centre for History and Philosophy of Science. ??He lectures in history of the social sciences and on topics related to labour, sickness and health. In recent years, Abma studied interdisciplinary in the social sciences and the position of the social sciences within the scientific domain as a whole; sharing their subject matter with the humanities and methodologically tending towards the natural sciences. ??In December 2011 Ruud Abma published the book “The publication factory. On the meaning of the Stapel affair” – a book most relevant to the topic of this podcast: scientific integrity.?? The lecture departs with a discussion of the historical developments within the psychological discipline; a discipline with specific methodological problems. Abma touches upon Freud and Milligram and the rise of experimental social psychology. In the second part of the lecture Abma analyses the Stapel-affair and the public response on the affair.

If science is about facts, then scientist should be clear on their definition of what ‘facts’ are. This is what historian of science Trudy Dehue argues in this lecture. Dehue came a long way in various academic fields. Her broad interests are reflected by her curriculum vitae: Dehue gained a Masters in Psychology in 1983 and in Philosophy in 1985, as well as a PhD summa cum laude with the a thesis on the changing concepts of ‘research’ and ‘objectivity’ in psychology in 1990. After receiving her PhD, Dehue continued to be active in the academic field, chairing the research group ‘Theory and History of Psychology’ from 1995 to 2013. Her books ‘De Depressie-epidemie: Over de Plicht het Lot in Eigen Hand te Nemen’ (2008) and‘Betere Mensen – Over Gezondheid als Keuze en Koopwaar’ (2014) were very influential and further testify her large range of interests. Trudy Dehue currently holds a full professorship for the History of Science as well as the History of the Social Sciences at the University of Groningen. The handouts of the lecture can be downloaded here. Also have a look at the two videoclips below.

Episode 2 — Frank Miedema

Bas Haring is a Dutch philosopher and author to a few books for children and popular science such as; ‘Cheese and Theory of Evolution,’ ‘The Iron Will’ and ‘For a successful life: a plea for an unsuccessful life.’ He was also a host, made guest appearances or advised for a number of TV-shows such as; Utopia, Proefkonijnen and Pavlov. After a study of physics at Utrecht University, Bas Haring specialized in cognitive artificial intelligence. He currently holds a chair on in “public understanding of science” since 2007 at Leiden University. Here he trains young scientists in making science accessible to a more general audience. In this lecture, Bas Haring will explain a few complex concepts, mostly concerning biology, using metaphors and graphical representations of knowledge. You can find some of the pictures he refers to in his lecture below.