An important note from co-president, Jirana Craven

Dear ASC Members,

I am reaching out to share some personal news with implications for the ASC.

I have recently accepted a new position as Events and Projects Coordinator at the Science Teachers Association of Victoria. I am excited about the role as it combines my passion for science, science communication, and event coordination, and a great opportunity to contribute to the field of science education. 

To accommodate this new professional direction, I have made the difficult decision to end my tenure as Co-President at the Australian Science Communicators, effective immediately.

I am confident in Tom’s capability to continue in the president role on his own, and I respect Tom for undertaking this additional unplanned responsibility. Our discussions have reassured me that, although not what we expected, this decision is the right one for the ASC and me.

Tom and I had envisioned many exciting projects for what was intended as our final year leading the ASC. Tom, supported by Council, will need to reprioritise and some of these initiatives might face delays or require re-evaluation. I encourage anyone with the capacity and interest to step in and support these projects. ASC has a bright future, and your involvement can help maintain its momentum. 

I am deeply grateful for my time as Co-President. The warm welcome we received upon being elected, and the continued support you’ve all shown us has been tremendous – and makes it so much harder to leave. I am immensely proud of the progress Tom and I have achieved together, and the opportunity to work with such a diverse group of people has been inspirational. I look forward to cheering on Tom and the committee from the sidelines for the rest of the year. 

I appreciate your understanding and ongoing support during this change.

Kind regards,
Jirana Craven

ASC Co-Presidents’ Message, Jirana Craven and Tom Carruthers

Welcome to 2024. For those lucky to have had a break, we hope it was a restful, safe and rejuvenating one.

Looking forward, we’re both really excited for the year ahead. After our first national committee meeting last month, we are very optimistic about what we will be able to collaboratively achieve this year.

Something we are sure that you’ve all been thinking about over the break is the conference in June (or maybe not…)! Lucky for you, abstract submissions are open for talks, workshops, panels and anything else you may like to run at the meeting. A big reminder and warning – the discounted ‘Hatchling’ rate will close on 1 Feb. If you are wanting to lock in this rate you must fill in the ticket request form before Emma logs in on that Thursday morning.

And yes – you’ll note we said form above, not via the new member portal. Progress is still underway here, and we’re working to ensure that we are building the logic in the back-end to not only support this year, but hopefully the next several years without needing serious updates. We hope to have more to share shortly. A reminder of our previous promise: while the member portal is being updated, no-one’s membership will expire. Brand new members are still able to join by following the links on the main website to another form.

Finally, one of our key focuses for the year will be building and strengthening relationships within the science communication and broader STEM community, both here in Australia and abroad. To that end, we do want to highlight an opportunity for ASC members and friends to attend an event hosted by the Science Journalists Association of Australia – more details here. We hope to bring members more and more opportunities like this to increase the breadth of events and interests covered by our activities.

We wish you the best of luck and good health for the year ahead.

Researchers behaving badly

This event is being hosted by our friends at the SJAA.

While we have confirmed that the live event is available for ASC members to attend, the recording of the event is likely to be limited to SJAA members only. We recommend registering and attending for the live event if this is of interest to you.


A discussion on research integrity and scientific misconduct
with Professor David Vaux
January 31 18:00-19:30 AEDT online, free

Image
Professor David Vaux

From accusations of plagiarism against Harvard’s former president to the case against Marc Tessier-Lavigne and over to the horrific case of Paolo Macchiarini’s plastic windpipes — scientific misconduct has exploded into the public eye in recent times. Those high-profile stories are captivating, but they really only scratch the surface of a growing problem: There’s a lot of dodgy research out there and more is being uncovered every year.

One of the detectives investigating the scene of scientific misconduct crime goes by the name of Davo

Professor David “Davo” Vaux is a world-renowned cell biologist and one of Australia’s foremost research integrity experts. For more than a decade, he’s been calling for the establishment of an independent ombudsman / research integrity office in Australia to investigate cases of scientific misconduct. He is also the inaugural winner of the David Vaux Research Integrity Fellowship Award, established by the Australian Academy of Science in his name, and a member of the board of directors of The Center For Scientific Integrity, the parent organization of the Retraction Watch blog. 

The Science Journalists Association of Australia is thrilled to have David present on research integrity issues in Australia, explore how to spot dodgy research and explain why researchers might cut corners, fabricate data and falsify experimental results.

Direct from Davo: “This talk will provide some examples of where science can go wrong, and will be illustrated by examples of papers by high profile researchers in prestigious journals that would only have had some value had they been printed on absorbent paper with perforated pages.” (emphasis mine)

It’ll be on Zoom, so BYO, come hang out and learn from one of the best. Details below.

The important stuff!

When: Wednesday, January 31,
17:00-18:30 AEST | 18:00-19:30 AEDT |
16:30-18:00 ACST | 17:30-19:00 ACDT |
15:00-16:30 AWST

More details? Email events at asc.asn.au