New Books in Neuroscience: Christophe Bernard, Director of Research at INSERM and Editor-in-Chief of eNeuro

Listen here to New Books in Neuroscience, a podcast from New Books Network featuring interviews with neuroscientists about their new books. For more information, visit New Books in Neuroscience.

Originally released: February 18, 2022

Listen to this interview of Christophe Bernard, Director of Research at INSERM and Editor-in-Chief of eNeuro. We talk about the review process, about education in the sciences, and again a little bit more about education in the sciences.

Christophe Bernard : "Science is everything that a scientist does. But for many people, science is only the bench work — to them, that's what a scientist really does. And the publishing part — well, that's just something that others do. Even the review process, for too many people, is just not fully integrated into the work that scientists are doing. But there should not be a barrier between doing science and reviewing science. It should be the same world — a continuity between the two. Now, in institutions, they focus all their efforts on teaching people how to do science. But doing science also is knowing how to review a paper. Perhaps you know, but there is a crisis in the reviewing process. Many authors have commented on being mistreated by reviewers, and although there'll be many reasons why that happens, the main reason is that we are not taught how to review a paper. And this just leads to frustration, or worse, because when you're an author and you submit a paper and you receive comments which are aggressive and do not make sense and are just plain unhelpful, then you start to distrust the system."

Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at writeyourresearch@gmail.com.

We believe that the principles expressed or implied in the podcast remain valid, but certain details may be superseded by evolving knowledge since the episode’s original release date.