High-level speakers at the "Séance de Reflexion": Ioannidis, Nowotny, Hampe

This picture shows the US researcher John Ioannidis at the Séance de Reflexion of the SNSF in Berne.

The National Research Council meets once a year to reflect on its funding activities. This year's "Séance de Reflexion" featured high-level speakers from abroad, including John Ioannidis and Helga Nowotny.

The "Séance de Reflexion" was held at the end of November in Berne. In workshops, talks and discussions, the members of the National Research Council took a close look at the topic "Funding, Competition and Europe".

The US researcher John Ioannidis, professor at Stanford University's School of Medicine talked about "Funding research: Impact, conformity and reproducibility". Ioannidis is the author of numerous articles on science and research funding, such as "Conform and be funded" or "Why most published research findings are false". The latter article is the most downloaded technical paper of the science journal PLoS Medicine.

In her talk "Making a difference: Past and future of the ERC in the European research landscape", Helga Nowotny, president of the European Research Council (ERC) and professor emeritus for social studies of science at ETH Zurich, shed light on the history and funding principles of the ERC.

Michael Hampe, professor of philosophy at ETH Zurich, spoke about "Science and competition". He looked into the questions: why do people compete, who faces who and what consequences does competition have for people and science?