with breakfast. In fact, the second day
was brought in with bowling (or Kügel
in German), billiards (or pool in American) and some tasty beverages…all
that was missing was more food. Let’s
just say that no one went to bed early
that night, including myself. But, after
a few hours of sleep, we were on again
for the morning and another round of
talks and poster sessions. Overall, the
vibe could be described as nerdy-chill.
We even had the pleasure of hosting
Kai-Markus Müller, CEO of The Neuromarketing Labs1 who visited before
lunch to share his experience after
leaving the Graduate Training Center of
Tübingen2. This experience includes the
build-up and management of a com-
profit organization aimed at providing
credible information and informing the
public about the use of animals for scientific research, I was happy to speak
about Pro-Test Deutschland.
When our keynote speaker, Stefan
Treue of the German Primate Center3
(Göttingen), joined the conference that
evening the course of discussions began to drive home a few points. The
first point is about the abundance of
misinformation out there, which gives
the general public an inaccurate portrayal of scientific research. One such
example would be that scientists
choose not to use alternative methods so they could engage in lucrative
animal research. Yet, to the contrary, a
enough to be heard over the opposition. But things are changing with the
formation of groups such as Pro-Test
Deutschland, NC3Rs5, EARA6 (European Animal Research Association) and
the Basel Declaration7. These groups
give scientists a louder voice, one that
is strong and backed by the facts.
Finally, one last point to remember
from that night is to learn how to explain
your research in a concise and understandable manner. This meaning, one
should practice their 2-minute poster
presentations as well as their 30-second elevator pitches. Remember not
everyone has an undefined amount
of time to listen to you talk, while also
possessing the background knowl-
by Diljit Singh Kajal
pany that uses neuroscience methods,
namely EEG (electroencephalography),
to classify brainwave patterns during
the observation of specific commercial products. It is an interesting idea
to look at the differences in neural
activity during product-cognitive mismatching – you could definitely learn
a lot from this kind of study. For you
younger researchers out there, he’s
looking for interns!
After Müller’s interesting talk came
lunch and coffee to fuel the brain and
get everyone ready for the evening
session of talks. Considering the overall theme of the conference was science communication, I think everyone
was able to relate to the topic – myself included – which served us well
given the diverse backgrounds of the
participants. As a co-founder of a non-
28 | NEUROMAG | July 2016
scientist would be glad to employ alternative methods, e.g. computational
modeling of neuronal activity, and they
often do! In fact, by German law4, the
ethical committee would not approve
a scientific research project using animals if the same study could be conducted using an alternative approach.
However, these alternatives cannot
always replace animal research. Furthermore, one does not earn more
money through the pursuit of animal
research considering the costs of husbandry and animal care are multitudes
more than nearly all alternative methods.
Another point to drive home is that
most of the general public receives
information about animal experimentation from animal rights/protection
groups. This is largely because scientists do not possess a voice loud
edge to understand the complex details. Scale back and employ a bottomup approach to build your topic and
capture the interest of your listeners.
Day 3. The last day of the conference
began like the day before, with breakfast, except this time there was a lot
more snow! It had snowed throughout the previous night, therefore, the
next morning truly looked like a Winter Wonderland. There were a couple
of workshops: one led by André Maia
Chagas on Arduino circuit boards and
the other by Jonas Rauber on Github.
The workshops were a great opportunity to introduce two very different
concepts.
Overall, we received positive feedback
from the course of events. Everyone
even had time to play like kids in the