 Good afternoon or morning or evening to everyone we are widespread over the globe today It's an unusual situation. I'm personally talking from home I made an effort to put up each you logo in my background I'm not sure you see he's in the right way but I just wanted to point out that this is a new experience for all of us and I think it will be a nice and a very useful experience So I would like to thank you attendees I'm very glad to see so many of you today I would like to thank the speakers who accepted to talk in a very unusual situation and I am very very grateful to sister associations I think it is very significant that AGI, AGU, AOGS, GSA and the JPGU and the GSL are cosponsoring this session This is a clear demonstration of the key importance of scientific integrity for modern science Let me point out in fact that this session was planned and the speakers were invited well before COVID-19 In a world we know that was very different and probably will never go back to its previous configuration However, by an irony of faith, I think that the role of scientific integrity during this period during the current global emergency is more important than ever and therefore I think the session indeed is very timely In fact we slightly changed the title because we think that it's very important to have a discussion on scientific integrity today Indeed we all know we are experts, we are geoscientists, planetary and space scientists We are experts on global crisis and management of catastrophes and we know that during this kind of crisis integrity and in particular scientific integrity is a fundamental value to ensure a quick recovery And we can see it today, we can see that the development of the pandemic clearly showed the importance of science The support of scientists turns out to be fundamental to take decisions and devise strategies And I think above all scientists are essential to establish a proper communication and cooperation with the public which are essential ingredients to recovery And we are seeing in these days the key importance of the public trust in science which is in turn it is stimulated by the trust of policy makers in people And these are all based on scientific integrity which is essential to make sure that we trust each other So I think that indeed today we are discussing issues that are also very relevant to COVID-19 And I think we may get today important guidance on how to transform this crisis into an opportunity It looks like a slogan but actually I think that getting opportunities from this situation is the best way to honor the memory of the friends and colleagues who lost their lives together with the so many people and other people during the past few weeks Also I think that in this period geosciences have an important role to play Actually I have been approached by several journalists and people in the past few weeks asking me my opinion on how geosciences can contribute to recovery from recovering from the pandemics and I mean it is a challenging question but after thinking at it I found that the answer is relatively easy and is based on an essential premise I think that while we recover from the pandemics we have to make sure that we don't expose we don't increase our exposure and vulnerability with respect to other global threats In other words I think that while devising strategies and actions to recovery from the pandemics we can make sure that this action in a synergic way helps the humanity to reduce its global exposure to crisis like the pandemics and in order to be so synergic in order to devise effective strategies for protecting the humanity by all these kind of events I think we need the support of all science all the scientific disciplines we need the support of geosciences as well as as well as planetary and space sciences So I think that this can work if we are aware of the relevant role of scientific integrity and the relevant role of keeping an open and transparent approach to science and this is what we we are discussing today it's now time to introduce the first speaker who is Chris McEntee the other speakers will be introduced later by the other co-convenants before they talk so Chris first of all Chris thank you very much for joining us today for over 25 years Chris has successfully led societies to increase their impact and reach through reinvention and innovation in governance membership publishing meetings public policy and outreach so her experience on scientific integrity is an exceptional one most recently as we know she served as the CEO of the American Geophysical Union our excellent sister association that annually serves more than 100 000 members again is another sign of excellent experience in science and scientific integrity Chris has received numerous awards for her outstanding leadership including the professional CEO of the year it's a recognition that is awarded by ceo update she also received the 40 under 40 movers and shaker award by crane chicago business and also she's a recipient of the asa is women who advance america award Chris we are really looking forward to your presentation today and i'm already thank you very much already now for joining please Chris thank you alberto very much for the opportunity to be with you all today the title of my presentation is earth and space science in the 21st century a call to action and i want to cover three key points one is to um reinforce through a few examples uh the role that earth and space science has as the essential science for the 21st century how i see the covid 19 crisis presenting an opportunity for scientists and scientific integrity to really position earth and space science is even more relevant than perhaps appreciated in the past and suggests that we rethink science as a band boundary channel and the role as an advocate in terms of positioning earth and space science as essential and sees upon this opportunity i think we all know we only have one habitable planet and that the human impact on this planet is very significant and all of these issues related to the ability of the planet to continue to support habitat are grounded in the domains of earth and space science all sustainability issues the growing population the food supply making sure we have clean air soil and water a climate change the stress on natural resources moving through the energy transition and of course these relate to human interactions with our planet but we know the planet itself has a number of natural hazards weather climate conditions that also threaten public safety health well-being and economic prosperity the work done by the stock home resilience center is a good example of the impact of the stressors they're being placed on this planet where they found that already the planet has exceed what they view as safe planetary boundaries for biodiversity loss the nitrogen circle cycle and the climate crisis with several others pushing on the limits of planetary boundaries to make things safe for habitats to continue in a symbiotic way on this planet because of this the UN has developed the sustainable development goals and i could argue that earth and space science has a central role to play in all 17 of these goals but at the same time at least over half of them are squarely in the domain of the contributions of earth and space science to prosperity and society and to maintaining biodiversity and a resilient and sustainable ecosystem over time now earth and space science if it is the science of this century because of the grand societal challenges being faced to maintain this planet as the way we want to see it maintained in the future but it doesn't exist sit in about a bubble many factors influence the intersection of science and society and the role that earth and space scientists can provide some of these are squarely within the domain of science of science it's long been talked about academic silos research silos and the rewards and incentives in science favor those doing the fundamental research and high impact research and are not as favorable for those who want to engage in the work of science and society crossing disciplines within and outside of earth and space science be science communicators or work in roles outside of traditional academic disciplines at the same time we also know that external factors such as how well is science trusted our science and scientists acting with integrity are also really critical in terms of societal value and relevance and intersection with society and there's been a growing push to globalization being countered by the fact of nationalism of populism which also prevents sometimes countervailing forces in being able to achieve both global collaboration and science that continues to accelerate but also global governance to be able to address these key societal challenges that are global in nature and not bound by geographic divisions in terms of states and countries and regions and finally the fourth industrial revolution which is leading to the internet of things and big data everywhere is impacting all sectors of society and how we interact how we work how we live we play and also how research is conducted now to me COVID-19 because I'm known to be a glass half full person as scary as it is and being in the age group where I'm at a higher risk it also makes it express especially scary I always see an opportunity in every crisis and if they look through two past recent histories of Winston Churchill saw the opportunity in the difficulty of World War II and Ron the manual who served in the Obama White House at the right at the height of the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis saw it as an opportunity to never let a good crisis go to waste so why is COVID-19 as Alberto was saying an opportune time for earth and space science to also be even more relevant and valuable to society and intersect more for societies to solutions and in the future well even before COVID-19 the welcome global monitor trust that looks as respect and trust in scientists around the world saw that in every region around the world a majority of those who responded and this is statistically significant in terms of representative of the global population by regions either placed high trust or medium trust in science so we already had a base to build upon and in less than half a year because of science even in the United States where we have an administration that does not value science as we would like but in less than a half a year because of science institutions and society have rethought the entire educational experience rethought the conference experience like we're doing today research institutions and universities are adjusting their tenure and promotion practices to allow more flexibility given the disruption there's been accelerated global science to the collaboration to find a cure and treatments for this disease despite political barriers society has responded in an unprecedented way about social distancing and quarantines and everyone is beginning to plan new ways of living working educating and researching for things to be different when this crisis ends so I think this gives us an opportunity to update mental models of how science is done banded their bush in his endless frontier in the mid 20th century proposed what he called the linear model of science and this is the thing that is still barely understood and thought about today that is that governments provide the research funding it goes to academia and then there's this middle ground of consultants and translators who then work with the policy and business sectors to develop applications and get to societal benefits in 1997 though stokes updated this to say let's talk about what he called pastures quadrant and this was based and named after Louis Pasteur who framed used inspired science and said that you can both be looking for societal applications in his case to deal with the disease in the bovine population and in for binters but you also can advance germ theory at the same time the fundamental understanding of germ theory recently the national science foundation has talked about convergence research the merging of ideas approaches and technologies from widely diverse fields of knowledge to stimulate innovation and discovery this is an important step for the national science foundation to talk about funding transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research it is still grounded in scientific institutions and scientific research without much discussion of also engaging the policy sector the civic sector and the corporate and financial sector as co-collaborators on the research in 2008 Ben Schneiderman and PNNS talked about the twin win model of research goals where he talked about combining institutional university researchers with the corporate sector to both come up with breakthrough theories and publish papers and validated solutions that would be ready for widespread dissemination and he actually looked at the citation impact when universities in the U.S. actually partnered with the corporate sector he found that when the university's top six private universities actually co-collaborated with the corporate sector actually there's number of citations went up also in international collaboration he found the same result with the top six U.S. public universities in the United States so I want to call today for a discussion on what I'm calling beyond convergence and this is adding to our toolbox a role not for translators out of science but science scientists research institutions as boundary spanners where we could foster civic and policy debate that's well grounded in relevant science and to encourage science to conserve communities places environments and sustainability and what we think about creating this discipline within science or in collaboration but not as a distinct discipline that somewhere is in between science and other sectors of the economy here we'll be working in a co-design and co-production of knowledge role and a couple ways we could do this is we could institute co-design stakeholder research and application collaborate collaboratives which adopt the twinlin model we could build bridges within an outside of science for example the c city the c40 cities program is the mayors of the large cities around the world who have all set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their cities by really aggressive targets however if you look at the work they're doing and their website you don't see partners listed from scientific societies and research institutions vice versa future earth is taking on similar challenges but if you look at their advisory board you will be hard to find somebody outside of a scientific background who is serving on their advisory board and advising on the work that they're doing i also want to call for scientists to get more comfortable engaging in advocacy and to add recognition rewards and incentives for those who are willing to be boundary spanners and to be advocates and i just want to talk a little bit for on this one slide about scientific credibility and advocacy it is thought that engagement and advocacy hurts the credibility of scientists however in the u.s a randomized national survey was done to actually test this with scientists talking about climate change and you can see that the credibility of science was actually very consistent until the scientists actually said they were for nuclear power but even there it did not drop in a very significant manner and as Nancy Pelosi recently said in the covid crisis when she was asking about scientists being political she said i don't want to be political about covid either but it is political and so make no mistake the decision not to speak is also a political decision so my three back to my three key points for today that we can rethink um science as a boundary channel is an advocate because our science is so essential and that covid creates an opportunity for learn to that and reposition um earth and space science is even more relevant into the future and Ralph Otto Emerson in the 1873 was talking for scientists to do the same and he said action is essential without a thought can never ripen into truth thank you for the opportunity to present my thoughts all righty well thank you very much chris as usual you're so stimulating to hear you speak and i want to thank alberto and chloe for pulling this off it's really wonderful to see everybody's faces i think this is one of the other remarkable things that the pandemic has done is it's really connected us it's invited us whether we want it or not into each other's homes it's and at the same time i've been in homes of people i never thought i'd go into their homes of um it's highlighted the importance of science you know we see everybody's looking at graphs and it's also really made it clear that we as humans can work together to solve a really gnarly problem um ag was just finished it's new strategic plan and we've really laid out the vision of a thriving sustainable and equitable future which is really what we're talking about here is how we can be make sure that our future is supported by discovery innovation and action but underpinning that has to be the values of excellence integrity respect diversity collaboration and bringing forward the next generation of scientists and us and a scientifically engaged public so i like to think we're there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the pandemic and as we recover it as earth scientists we're used to working in this interconnected both scientific world and our interconnected physical processes and human processes remembering we're part of them so as we recover from this public health crisis we i think we have a very unique opportunity to move forward on what we've seen as the planetary health crisis our science will continue to be essential and we must work to build those global connections as we speak from our homes and as we learn how to work together even new different ways so with that overview of where agu is going and of where we as societies are it is my pleasure to introduce claudia izu reyna who's a geotechnical engineer and served as a consultant both in denmark and sweden for several years before moving 2009 to brussels where she joined the european research council as program officer in charge of earth and space science research at erc she's also the coordinator of the gender activity group back to that diversity issue which is so keen to key to the future of our science and she's in 2018 she was nominated the chair of egu's equity diversity and inclusion working group so with that we've turned it over to claudia and are looking forward to her what she has to tell us today and what we can learn and thank you so much thank you very much for this introduction science is rooted in basic values at rights and freedom is one of them freedom ranging from the freedom of thought freedom of movement freedom of speech and to report findings indeed the relationship between intellectuals or scientists and the rulers has drawn attention in many different historical contexts scientists did not have an easy life and history is rich in examples of struggles by scientists for freedom they often had to struggle to find patterns and to avoid prosecution and not always succeeding but also fighting religious authorities often associated with political power was a permanent challenge to freedom of thought and freedom of movement which is a major requirement for scientific cooperation and dissemination nowadays we also have other important players we have industry on one hand which represents a very powerful sector by supporting some people and challenging and sometimes even discrediting the finding of others these mostly driven by economical strategies and market shares and then there's also the media sometimes taking a complacent partial role driven by audiences and populistic approaches instead of reporting facts and committed to the role of potential mass educators we live certainly in worrying times we are dealing with the climate crisis the climate crisis in times where some politicians are tempted to the globalized economies and trade by closing borders and even building walls once again letting scientific collaboration be affected but and reshaped by some of these visions is highly concerning especially when we know that the challenge that we are facing our global nationalism conditions the impact that research and science can have and now on top of all of this mix we have a pandemic affecting the world with unprecedented conditions and impacts that are difficult to fully predict the importance of global collaboration and scientific findings has never been so acute and also so visible to the public which actually brings in some very unexpected twists for instance after decades of propaganda against vaccines by some groups we have now literally the whole world anxiously hoping for a vaccine now this represents a unique opportunity for science in the future but this also requires responsible actions and high standards of integrity in order to resist the pressures and temptations of promising the impossible just this morning the Guardian reported the news from the UK stating that the public trust in science risks being damaged by potential political interferences that continually say hey we are following the science advice all the way because in fact the public domain don't know what the scientists are advising and because the advisors are not fully free to come on radio and television and tell what their advices has been successful complex global problems it is necessary freedom of movement to cooperate scientifically using collective capacity that is available but also the freedom to share and access data and freedom to disseminate results and ideas even when those ideas and results are not popular and this can only be fully delivered in a setting that is unbiased by conflicting interests be those economical political and sometimes even personal and this is why high-risk research is successful mainly through public funding and funding that from not-for-profit institutions universities and research bodies where actually the necessary conditions are in place for creative minds to develop their ideas freely our experience at the ERC actually shows that scientific research functions as a rather complex ecosystem and to thrive no component can be neglected and by the way funding is only one of them one of the most important components is trust is the trust for instance in the integrity of the evaluation system which in our case has resulted in a worldwide recognition of our results about and our grantees but there's also a reciprocal trust in the integrity of the scientists that are given full freedom to carry out research with no predefined priority topics and which the ERC is a fully bottom-up the research carried out by grantees actually addresses a wide range of issues in the outbreak of the pandemic we could quickly identify over 50 ERC projects equivalent to a hundred million euros that were contributing to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic by providing insights from several different scientific fields ranging from virology epidemiology immunology pass for new diagnostics and treatments public health medical devices artificial intelligence social behavior crisis management and mathematical modeling of the pandemic's evolution based on physical systems being responsible at the ERC for the earth system sciences research area i've been seeing daily the impacts of the pandemic in scientific activities of researchers and we're still in the early stages of this pandemic research in the geosciences in an age of pandemics is science significantly impacted during lockdown and travel bans there are no possibilities for to carry fieldwork or carry out expeditions to access labs for experiments and analysis this will without doubt result in significant delay in scientific production and several will have implications in track records of some scientists and from my observation i can see already now that some fields and some groups of people are much more affected than others even within the geosciences and then there are the networking opportunities such as egu gpgu and agu which are so important to open horizons and create new opportunities for collaborations especially for the early career scientists and this is not so easy to fully recreate in a virtual setting now best practices to tackle the effects of a pandemic require out-of-the-box thinking and actions but also flexibility and solidarity in reaction to the COVID-19 crisis the ERC immediately reminded grantees of the existing possibility to adjust their research program to address to address COVID-19 related research in their ongoing projects in addition to this and also similar to other funding bodies we are offering grant extensions quasi-automatic to projects directly or indirectly affected okay this is about institutions but let us not forget that scientists themselves as individuals are part of a system that actually makes decisions about people there is the peer review system making decisions on who when and what gets to be published another example in the hands of the scientific communities is recruitment promotion mentoring nominations awards remember that this power is also a remarkable opportunity for scientists to stand above political flows and do what is right and needed in an era of global challenges and this in time where the power in my opinion ought to be guided by a higher sense of fairness and integrity to tackle the risk of further increasing the inequalities in both our society but also within our own scientific communities now to conclude note that to remain loyal to principles of integrity it's the only way for scientists to safeguard freedom for their own sake but also for the society at large and in fact not having a clear position in controversial topics is a position and the rather damaging one more than ever we all need to stand up collectively but also individually in order to preserve our common values and rights thank you Claudia I think it's now the turn of Odaka to introduce oh yes yeah okay thank you yeah yeah I'm a hodaka kawahata from japan geoscience unions first of all the we jpg completely agree and endorse the declaration of significance of geoscience expertise led by the eju president professor alberto montanary and we would like to promote the recognized items in future and it's a pity that we could not meet many scientists at the eju meeting due to convict 19 one kind of the severe hazards but since we had no flights to Vienna we may contribute to the carbon offset this time maybe and people recognize the effect by the virtual world at the moment according to the latest the economic focus the air traffic demand will not return for the time being even after the cobit 19 due to the less trouble in the several years geoscience community considers the advantage disadvantage of holding venues or the virtual meeting that is what we can do without meeting directly and what we cannot do without meeting by taking the advantage of this experience we want to develop more attractive meeting in future our second jpg eju meeting has been postponed for seven weeks and now that we work harder to make an attractive packages next year the corona pandemic will be over then we hope to hold the special sessions to discuss on the overcome the cobit 19 and future development of the us and the planetary science by inviting the old president by from the unions anyway i would like to introduce the next speakers the doctor sylvia paperoni sylvia is a geologist working at italy an institute of geophysics and volcanology she's interested in the geohazard's risks and the geoscience communications she's also the international leaders of geotics she has been awarded in italy for science communications and natural literature today she will make an interesting presentations on the geoscientists as a social and political actors please thanks for inviting me to this event i would like to share some personal thoughts starting from the two keywords of this symposium integrity and freedom in the past days i wondered if integrity is even possible without freedom or if freedom is possible without integrity in a moral sense integrity refers to being incorrect honest strictly adherent to ethical principles and these adherents is not simply formal but implies a conscious and convinced observance of a set of rules when conducting activities freedom is extension from external control interference and regulation in philosophical terms freedom is the power to exercise choice and to make decisions without constraints or threats freedom means independence of thought an indispensable prerequisite for new discoveries and advancement so i believe that in science only the simultaneous presence of both those conditions can ensure to a scientist the possibility of producing a science of the highest quality excellent science requires freedom to follow up and shape intuitions but at the same time requires absolute adherence to research integrity principles and scientific methods the present pandemic has shown the need for integrity and freedom as fundamental elements for practicing a science that is truly in the service of human beings especially in times of crisis it is necessary to ensure the maximum response of the system to a threat and if the threat is new unknown like the covid 19 scientists must be left free to apply their knowledge to follow their intuitions to explore all possible solutions and also to have a clash of opinions if needed that are functional to scientific progress in times of emergency each citizen requires reliable answers from those who know the issue from a scientific point of view and from those who consequently have to make decisions on the health of the community so competence professional updating cooperation fair comparison between different hypotheses and openness to dialogue are the basis of scientifically rooted and carefully weighted political decisions through the expert advice of scientists now let's see the words that introduce the symposium society benefits from scientific research and communication of results it is evident to everyone how true this sentence is right now in the midst of the pandemic in italy as in other countries scientists are supporting governments in making decisions their interventions has contributed decisively to influence the political strategies in addressing the emergency well the same should also apply to geoscientists as geoscientists we are at forefront of informing and supporting society in the face global anthropogenic changes and this implies ethical and social obligations it is evident that the geoscientists are involved in politics in particular when we deal with issues that have to do with people's life or that have repercussions in economic and environmental terms geoscientist consciously or unconsciously contribute to building the social identity of human communities to defining the cultural and perceptive vision of the world and society when we devote ourselves to training and education in geoscience we are doing politics through our knowledge we are playing an active role in the political and social life of our nations we are putting ourselves at the service of the common good we are contributing to the construction of a knowledgeable society and knowledge is a fundamental value on which to build a more aware just inclusive and democratic society so it is fundamental to find the best way to propose geoscience knowledge politics highlighting the contribution that we can give to society in supporting the choices of governments on the best strategies to follow but without hiding in any circumstance the uncertainty that accompanies our scenarios the errors of our models always refusing to say what we don't know we have to be transparent in communicating scientific information taking care that the final users of that information are capable of understanding it so the problem is not only what to say but also how to say it usually politicians as well as citizens are not prepared to understand concepts such as probability uncertainty or error that are fundamental in geoscience especially when we talk about risks so they often demand us to provide infallible forecasts while only probabilistic one are possible this is the reason why it is important that the scientific information is accompanied by clear explanations in order to put the society in the condition to understand also the limits of our scenarios at the same time the communication of a partial truth should be avoided because it may create misunderstandings and open the door to conspiracy thinking in the population and finally we must not claim the monopoly of truth because there are many other factors not only scientific but also social or economic ones that may influence a political position so in my opinion this is what the current pandemic is teaching the geoscientists so we must devote ourselves to establish a fruitful relationship with governments based on a specific skills relating to the problems to be addressed on the availability of verified and verifiable data on a respectful attention to different scientific hypotheses and intervention methods on a clear definition of the achievable objectives and also multidisciplinary interaction skills and availability to cooperate another point of this symposium research may be threatened by censorship intimidation or political interference three critical situations that can seriously compromise the work of each geoscientist threatened their scientific freedom and undermine the possibility of conducting a qualified scientific activity father more freedom is also the guarantee for acting ethically free geoscientists are in the position to propose their the choices they didn't write in a certain circumstance in the presence of political pressures or threats the way to proceed in research is alternate the geoscientist can lose the control of the scientific process fear is think for survival the compromise to avoid additional negative consequences will take over ultimately geoscientists will not do the best for society but they work will only be functional to please those who are intimidating them in this case is only legal frameworks based on fundamental human rights can help those who are persecuted but our scientific community can do much especially to help those colleagues who are living in very difficult contexts those geoscientists who are not protected by liberal legal systems the existence of authoritative organizations such as the EGU the AGU IUGS and many others can make a difference they can intervene by putting pressure on governments so that they in turn act as promoters of actions according to traditional international channels a motivated cohesive and responsible international geoscience community can assure a safe operating space to geoscientists also to those who work in difficult or even oppressive conditions for whom carrying out honestly their profession can also mean losing one's job or even jeopardizing one's life a safe space to support them to follow best practices and ethical principles to qualify their work and recognize the value of a responsible action to counter abuses and intimidation we who work in a safe and relatively free context we owe these to them so there is a need for shared governance between those geoscience organizations the creation of a large network articulated in different forms and instruments for example joint commissions that are able to dialogue with governments or observatories that somehow monitor the most critical situations worldwide we should create more transparent authoritative and independent international governance mechanisms in the geoscience field which encourage the circulation of knowledge and experience among the nations and provide decision-making support to governments these bodies should facilitate the integration of decisions by each country that impact the globalized human system rather than initiatives that refers only to local context so let's learn from the current pandemic the importance to create a global geoscience governance really capable of dealing with possible future planetary crisis because the decisions even the drastic ones that humanity will necessarily have to take in those situations will have to be shared and carefully waited in advance and this absolutely needs the clear definition of the last three key words of the symposium policies roles and responsibilities the finding our roles and responsibility is a priority task to avoid the misunderstandings and undue overlaps with other stakeholders everyone should ask themselves as a preliminary act that defines their scientific and ethical status what is my role as a geoscientist in society and what are the social responsibilities that result from holding that specific position in the social architecture the geoscientist has a social role is a social actor policies are nothing more than the formalization of the interactions of various social stakeholders including geoscientists and politicians but their definition presupposes that the social value of our acting is already clear within ourselves it is precision in relation to the social context that the geoscientist assumes at the same time the dual role of moral subject and social actor a moral subject therefore an agent consciously responsible for their own conduct and actions a social subject who actively contributes to the construction of the idea of society to the vision of its future to its cultural and economic development based on the democratic values of shared responsibility as geoscientists we have knowledge builders custodians and educators of knowledge we are developers managers and controllers of scientific methods and processes we should be open to novelty but also doubtful rigorals but also intuitive curiosity should push our intellect critical thinking and scientific rigor should connote our action we are able to provide data develop scenarios outline options and suggest possible solutions by always taking into account the limits of our knowledge and models and always keeping in mind that operational decisions have to be left to decision makers they are the ones who have to choose between the different options our great responsibility towards politics and society consists of being competent expert and honest advisor while our workforce lies in becoming an instrument of political consensus and power thank you for your attention okay and i think it is now the co-combinator Douglas Walker who is introducing the next speaker hi i'm Doug Walker i'm from the geological society of America and the University of Kansas this has been a fantastic session so far it's interesting to hear these talks and to hear the other perspectives with the fact that gsa has gone through just completed a planning and starting to implement a strategic plan to move forward of course at the base of this is scientific integrity and honesty but we're also working towards other goals obviously the public policy aspect is something that we have to keep going but also the unique challenges for a geological society on inclusivity and to bring everybody into working especially in the field sciences trying to make those opportunities and i think this crisis will emphasize this even being more inclusive and being able to develop better and more unique ways of communicating our scientific knowledge our scientific results so that we can really participate in shaping the future of policy and shaping the future of other people's opinions through integrity and honesty and science okay well it's my pleasure to introduce uh professor Jorge Hueta Perez is the senior vice president of the university of Central America at UCA Nicaragua where he also runs a molecular biology lab he received his PhD in biological sciences and biogeochemistry biochemistry from the University of Sao Paulo School of Medicine Brazil in 2009 Jorge became the founding president of the academy of sciences of Nicaragua Jorge has been a consultant to numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations including United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean German Agency for International Cooperation Jorge is an outspoken advocate for improving science education and the appropriate use of biotechnology for sustainable development Jorge thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak um you may have heard a lot about Nicaragua in the past two years especially although with the recent COVID experiences uh you know the news about Nicaragua has not been necessarily on the headlines however uh there's a very difficult situation that we have been facing in the past couple of years and I want to tell you about how does that situation has been impacting the education and scientific sectors so you know about Nicaragua which is a country that has been historically affected by natural disasters including earthquakes you may be familiar with the 1972 earthquake in the capital city of Nicaragua that left more than 10,000 deaths and completely destroyed the whole capital city so the current capital city that we have now is absolutely a new city compared to the one that we had in 1972 and so we also had other natural disasters such as the Mitch hurricane which was very horrible disaster that occurred in 1998 in the whole Central America but in particular in Honduras and Nicaragua where it affected and created a bunch of landslides with more than 2,000 deaths and so on we have had many fires you know more recently a fire in the natural reserves on the Indio Maes two years ago and also just this year a couple weeks ago we also had been experiencing a lot of devastating fires in the north part of Nicaragua and usually these natural disasters are intertwined with repeated political crises including foreign interventions dictatorships you know the Cold War Nicaragua experienced 10 years of war in the 80s armed conflicts and also many political arrests and obviously you know this conjunction of natural disasters and political crises have been hampering the economy Nicaragua and also devastating institutions including those institutions that care regarding the vulnerabilities geographic vulnerabilities in Nicaragua and all this has been more recently aggravated by the effects of global warming and Nicaragua is one of the most affected countries in the world so against this difficult background scientists and in particular scientists in the geosciences have been making significant strides both in education and in research so the scientific community of geoscientists have been building a more resilient Nicaragua by doing many activities including creating networks for operating seismic volcanic meteorological hydrological activities but also mapping multiple hazards in the most important and susceptible municipalities in the country they have been organizing emergency response and they have also developed university programs to build more capacities and more human resources that could respond to natural disasters so this has been a very clever work by many geoscientists that have been a lot of them studying abroad and collaborating international with many geoscientists throughout the world and doing all of this with ethical values honesty and responsibility we have been hearing about that during this session so you know the most recent difficult situation that we have experienced is that Nicaragua has experienced a change regime in the past decade you know 12, 13 years already but we have had you know a terrible change where the country has experienced you know devastating the nation democratic system that we were just starting to build after so many years of difficulties and there's no rule of law now in Nicaragua and this has all led to horrible human right abuses and violence coming from the government so this has been worse in the past two years you know in two two years ago in April 2018 we had a natural rebellion of people protesting against this official that we have been living and unfortunately it was met with police violence so you know in the end you know what you would see through the cities was police attacking students and students and universities were the main background where people were starting to protest you know this is very common elsewhere so you would see like what you see right now in the picture you know police shooting at students and in the end human right committees in Nicaragua and also the inter-american committee on human rights have documented more than 300 people dead a lot of people illegally taken into prison and what we saw also was the government organizing paramilitary groups that uh these are gangs you know that are supporting the government and they would go around the citizen terrorize all the citizens so this created of course a very unstable country and the economy went down in particular the tourism and it has seriously affected uh science and education of course you know on the first hand because most of the young people that were protesting were university students but this obviously had an impact on the economy and also on the university teaching and the government starting uh creating you know repression also against professors that would be coming out defending the students so in the end you know what we have a very uh it's a very unstable country where we experience this government repression and the human rights now this has been affecting most many professionals in the areas of geosciences and you know this is a very uh it's a shame because geosciences were one of the strongest areas in the country including the geosciences at the government level so what we saw you know was uh this has been uh consequential you know on the difficulties for these professionals to do their work and it has undermined the credibility of those institutions you know because uh the government is dominating uh the the professionals they cannot speak out and they have been even forced to do uh things that the government asked them to do in terms of political issues so this has had all her uh horrible uh impact you know on the quality of this scientific research that geosciences are doing uh i just wanted to briefly go through uh a series of testimonies that i am bringing here to this forum uh some scientists scientists have shared what has happened with them obviously I have to avoid mentioning the names but you know these are professionals that work at ministries in government and they have been illegally fired uh one of them says um my participation has been interrupted by a political crisis and the destruction of institutions they have been imposed to become members of the political parties you know otherwise they don't get jobs in the government other people also working at public universities have been illegally fired uh because they don't you know sympathize with the political party and by doing all of this uh the government has been destroying this scientific process that is normally taking place at geophysical faculties you know a lot of the geoscientists scientists have also been fired and that this is in spite of universities having autonomy so the government is not respecting the autonomy and it's imposing the people that are uh in favor of them and not the people to think differently so this has contaminated the way that science should be done in the country uh usually there's no funds for research anymore and the funds are being directed towards political activities and imposing on those scientists to participate in those political activities uh as I was saying you know they have been fired from different universities this is the case of a professor that had been working at the public university for six years and was part of the teaching staff and you know they are fired and the letters uh where they are noticed that they're fired are shared with other people in political uh leaderships and the worst I think is what here but they're very important scientists geoscientists in Nicaragua is the fact that the government has been using young scientists as forces in the paramilitary forces to go around harass people at the universities and in neighborhoods so this is a very horrible situation and what I wanted to address here is the work that the academy of sciences in Nicaragua has been doing but this is obviously also the work that scientists as individuals have been doing as well you know and they have been really outspoken uh denouncing this situation denouncing this systematic destruction including the human right abuses so uh we are concerned about the censorship the harassment the coercion and the persecution on scientists two specific examples is what I uh wanted to explain here to you is uh what happened with one large project that the government was promoting it's called the inter-scientic canal project you may have heard about that because we have been writing a number of scientific publications and this has been considered as the largest engineering project in the world um so you know what happened with this project was again you know the government has not been respecting the voice of sciences and they wanted to push this project through you know being careless it went through parliament basically without any discussion and it did not call scientists you know for conversations being uh very um you know invasive it was considered the largest engineering project in the world of course it involves a lot of uh earth removals and you would expect that you know that many geoscientists would be considering the planning and consideration of this project and of course also the environmental impact that it would have because it would go through a very sensitive environment in Nicaragua you have the map there on screen and the canal would go you know going through the Caribbean all the way finding the pacific and going through uh various natural reserves including Lake Nicaragua you know which is the main water reservoir in Central America so all this would require a specific consideration scientific considerations which were not taken care and when we protested you know and demanded that there should be an environmental impact assessment you know final the government agreed and they said well the company is going to do you know the the environmental impact assessment so the academy called for running a couple of international workshops to discuss the gaps in this uh in this project you know and many scientists from all over the world participated in uh provided insights regarding this project and eventually the scientists you know found that uh the environmental impact assessment was not properly done and they would have to be pointing out that uh it has not provided the formal hazard or risk study for the project although the areas of concern included at least 22 tectonic faults along the canal route the other issue was that there was no analysis provided on the methodologies for the risk management associated with the fault movement and other associated consequences so the proposed canal uh would cross uh through high risk uh volcanic activity and yet crossing also the lake where there are twin volcanoes in the island of Pomotepi and yet the asia was not including uh an analysis an appropriate analysis of volcanic impact so this would have been a disaster you know fortunately the project has not gone through due to the fact that there's no money to run the project but the other issue is that through all these uh couple years that i've been telling you that we had this crisis the academy and scientists had very have been very outspoken in calling the government to stop human right abuses and also to let scientists do the work uh so uh human right crisis has developed and it has affected uh the economy it also has affected the work the way scientists work so in regard to COVID and i'll just make one line about this it's the same thing happening what we see is that the government is not considering science so Nicaragua is denying that there's a pandemic uh you know it's it's not acknowledging the appropriate numbers that uh would tell us about the magnitude of the crisis and it's also not implementing a plan an appropriate plan you know to deal with the um with the crisis so uh just wanted to summarize that uh this experience of the academy of sciences and the scientists in general uh you know being advocate for appropriate science for not interference of politicians in the sciences i think it's probably very good use to other scientists throughout the world uh you know we are demanding to stop human right abuses and also we're demanding that the government should let scientists do their work appropriately uh and we also need to call you know for an international response you know we need the international global scientific community to support Nicaraguans in the geosciences many of them have gone abroad we already have a hundred thousand people abroad as a result of this crisis you know they have been taking refuge in neighboring countries uh in particular in Costa Rica and uh we need to deal with this crisis as scientists throughout the world as well so we would expect uh the global scientific community you know to have a saying about what Nicaraguan scientists have been experiencing and of course you know because we know that this crisis uh is going to pass uh we're going to be left with very weak scientific institutions and we would need uh the help from the international global community thank you very much thank you you're very very interesting indeed i now would like to call on the floor again Robin Ben to introduce the last speaker before the discussion Jonathan Bumber okay so now it's my turn to introduce Jonathan Dan Burr who many of us know has a professor of glaciology and who was recently the president of HGU and for 10 years was editor of one of the early open access journals in a long standing advocate for open access science and the public understanding he served on many panels both in the north america and in europe and he is passionate about scientific integrity and has seen it both in its good forms and bad forms so over to you Jonathan so i'm the last of five speakers i realized we're running a bit late and so i'll try and keep this short and sweet um and um because i'm coming last i i didn't want to basically repeat what everybody else said so i did look at all your abstracts and try and come up with something complementary and slightly different uh i guess the audience will have to decide whether i i was successful with that um i think my perspective is going to be perhaps a little bit different from from the rest speaks in the sense that i'm going to uh talk about what i understand the important aspects of scientific integrity from perspective of a scientific society or association a little bit um like some of the points or the perspective that chris had but really as a scientist stand in some slightly different roles um and there were sort of three key points that i wanted to make um which is the importance of individual versus collective responsibility and i'll say we would about that um the role of scientific scientists in promoting integrity and engendering and supporting it and good practice and then if i have time um a couple of points observations about what i think we can learn from the current pandemic and um things that we can take forward from that so i'll start with um the importance of individual responsibility um and you know each of us as scientists has a responsibility for communities the scientific communities we represent but also to those that actually pay for the science that we do and by and large that tends to be um taxpayers and so i think i have one slide that i want to show this is this is um one slide it's not mine i stole it from um someone called to david king with his permission i should point out um so david king was the chief scientific advisor for the uk government from 2000 to 2008 um and that was at a time actually um in the uk when we had an outbreak of foot and mouth disease which at a national level was kind of akin in many respects to the current pandemic we have it's a very contagious disease that affects uh livestock and um tens of millions of livestock had to be destroyed and there was a lockdown in terms of movement of people and livestock at that time um so so he was um advising the uk government during that and for a period of about eight years after that he became the special envoy of the uk government to the un fcc that's the united nations framework on climate change until about 2017 and he developed um in collaboration with a number of uh scientific associations not just in the uk but worldwide um this what he's described as a universal ethical code for scientists you you could um you could describe it as um a kind of hypocritical for scientists but that's a tiny bit controversial um because um some might argue that a hypocritical and freedom of speech are in conflict i think that's a false dichotomy and i don't want to get into the sort of philosophical issues around freedom of speech and freedom of scientific endeavor and um integrity and ethics because like that really is a false dichotomy but so this is this is his uh universal ethical code for scientists and i really like it in fact we it was presented at a um union session i think chloe remember this um in 2017 which we've had a title of something like make make facts great again and it was all around um trust and regaining trust of the public in science and scientific process and i'll just quickly run through that what are called the three r's so in in the uk and english schools the three r's are normally mean um writing reading and arithmetic arithmetic but um here it's rigor respect and responses so the rigor is act with skill and care and all scientific work maintain upstate skills and assist others in development of those skills take steps to prevent corrupt practices and professional risk conduct declare conflicts of interest that's rigor respect be alert to the ways in which research derives from and affects the work of other people and respect the rights and limitations of others ensure that your work is lawful and justified minimize and justify any adverse effect your work may have on people animals and the natural environment and your responsibility seek discuss the issues that science raises society listen to the aspiration concerns of others and that doesn't just mean yet the rest of the scientific community that means wider society that's actually interested in what you're doing and um the issues that you're investigating do not knowingly mislead or allow others to be misled about scientific matters present in view scientific evidence theory or interpretation honestly now look i would hope that in framework certainly of this um union session we can all agree that those are um that that's a code that we can all um sign up to um and i'm going to do something uh a little bit bold perhaps quite brash actually um and i i sincerely hope that's the david isn't watching this and because he won't like it i'm going to add one more um one more uh sort of code that i think is essential particularly now um and that's transparency and i i'll explain why i think transparency is important integrity and trust are intimately connected and without both of those we are not going to succeed in communicating our message to a wider audience we're not going to succeed in convincing the public policymakers and the rest of the world that what we're saying is honest uh reputable and matters and so integrity and trust are vital to what we do and part of developing that trust with our audience is being transparent about what we do and i think that's where the open science um is is an essential part of that activity i i have been a sort of i wouldn't say lifelong um so i'm being a scientist my whole life that you know since since i've been aware of it i've been a strong open science i think it's it's absolutely the point about transparency is that um we should welcome it unless we have something to hide why wouldn't you want to be transparent in what you do how you operate and in in in the the the processes that you use to derive a resultant and you know the actual the methods um you'd only be concerned about transparency if actually there was something you didn't want your peers or the rest of the world to know about i can stop sharing that slide and i'm happy to make that available um actually there is a Wikipedia page on um i think Hippocratic oath uh for scientists and it started with Karl Popper and and uh Sir David King is just the kind of last person to contribute to that i think that there's some really important principles there so that's a little bit about um individual responsibility um collective responsibility is a little bit harder i think because um because we are we are a scientist we are not a collective um and um there is no universal governing body like a you know like a government like um you know that a law that governs how uh scientists geoscientists actually operate the closest to that i would argue um are scientists for scientists and so i think it's absolutely vital that organizations like EGU, AGU, JPG and all the others that are involved in this session and elsewhere um lead by example you know we as organizations must adhere to the highest ethical standards and operate with integrity in everything we do and i think it's also vital that we make sure that we get that message that we make sure that not just our members understand that and and that we we not just aspire but we hold these um high ideals but we need to make sure that the wider community policymakers, funders and the public um are also very much aware of the way we operate and the way we do science um and i think um i mean certainly speaking as former president of EGU i i think it's fair to say that we we could and should do more to advertise, explain and advocate to the non-science community um about the scientific process how it works um and the responsibilities we accept and uphold as scientists and the rigorous nature of the scientific process i think it's fair to say that if you asked a member of the public you know uh how does paper get published what's the process the vast majority would have no idea and i think the more we engage them the more we make sure they understand how things work and we make it transparent and open the easier it is for us to gain their trust and i think it's important that scientists are accessible and need to be representative i can sit down slightly running out of time here um and what do i mean by representative um uh there i'm really referring to um diversity i think a lack of diversity in our scientific community doesn't help our connection with the public and it doesn't help our ability to gain the trust of the wider audience you know they have to connect with us and um uh you know i think lack of diversity really doesn't help and i am saying that as a middle-aged white male so i do understand you know a privileged position that i i mean um but i think um we shouldn't could do much more to improve the diversity of um scientific community what can we learn from the pandemic um well you know it's really interesting in in the uk we have a daily briefing from uh the prime minister when when he's not in hospital um and miss the state for health um when he is um and millions of uk public watch this every day and he is flanked on his left by the chief scientific advisor at the uk government and on his right by the chief medical officer two scientists and in my lifetime in my lifetime as not just the science of my my lifetime that's the first time that you have had the public looking at and listening to two scientists two experts and and actually wanting their advice and taking their advice on a daily basis and i think that we do have a real opportunity right now um while the public are and i think others have touched on this while the public are receptive to um science scientific evidence evidence-based based process and um they are um you know being an expert is not like seen as a derogatory term we're not seen as a leader i think we we have an opportunity to engage much more with um both government and the wider um public but uh the counter of that is that i think it's also really important that we in inverted commas stay in our lane what i mean by that is we don't get blown off course we don't we don't try to help out we don't try to explain things or be useful um in in areas that are outside our own expertise because credibility is everything um you know where does credibility come from you know it takes a lifetime to acquire a reputation and it takes minutes to lose it um i was in discussion with the BBC about a documentary series they were making and the researcher on on the series said to me you know look it's absolutely critical that we get every fact right we can have 100 facts in this program and if one is incorrect it'll blow the whole series everything will be gone our our entire credibility and i think we need to remember that as geoscientists and i have seen this happen on on twitter and other other parts of social media and elsewhere that that is very tempting for us to try and i don't know um add add our voice try to be helpful um but in ways that actually aren't helpful are really counterproductive so i think that that's a really important message the final point i want to make which um is something that i feel really passionate strongly about is that uh and and i've written here you know in in times of emergency or crisis i i genuinely believe that cooperation is better than competition and actually i would argue that it's better at any time open science is better for society and it's better for the scientists thank you thank you very much very i had 45 seconds left no that's great i i would like to thank all the speakers because we are physically on time we got um a list of questions and i think uh i will need to make a selection some of them we got in the in the chat and some of them in the question and answer box i i try to make a selection because i think they are indeed interesting and i would start with with a question for dr wait and the first there is a remark by a member of the audience and also let me point out that we had an audience ranging from 300 to 350 so it's it's indeed excellent so as i said first a remark um a member of the audience brought very nice presentation to make people aware of current situation of science in nicaragua is a big step already and then there is a question for you yorge and the question is considering all the sad problems occurring in nicaragua and the great potential for international and multidisciplinary projects and high impact publication how do you see the future of geoscience in this country will it get better any recommendations for local and foreign geoscientists what could be possible solutions so yorge thank you for the question and the remarks uh it's very hard to answer because you know the solution to all these problems is solving the crisis that we have in nicaragua the the social political crisis and right now we are the very difficult situation where the government has established itself by force so you know they have their police and their supporters paramilitary all over the city controlling the city and the main cities and the whole country and while we don't resolve that issue you know we're not going to resolve the issues of the impact on the geosciences and education in general but of course um you know we we do need to bring that to the international forum and that was uh pleading you know for a call calling for the global scientific community to support geoscientists in particular and other scientists of course you know this situation has become ridiculous and just give me one example that it's going to be very funny to you just a few years ago maybe three four years ago there was a huge explosion next to the airport and um so you know the the comments were that was probably some military um uh dealings and that there was some kind of accident you know so the government tried to cover that up and for that they used geoscientists you know and what they made them say was that there was a meteorite that fell into Nicaragua and because of that we had that huge explosion so of course you know there's no proof of that and then you know it's very uh sad that that they have to make geoscientists you know makes ridiculous statements like that so the situation is very bad uh you know people keep being fired you know because they are trying to replace all the geoscientists that do not necessarily submit to the government and they're putting their people that are just complacent with the situation uh but I I think there is you know we should see the light at the end of the tunnel because this situation is very unsustainable you know and there's a growing demand from the coalition for a change you know of course this has to be a very peaceful situation and we don't want to go back to war Nicaragua has a history violence you know 10 years of war uh and I don't think anybody wants to go back to that but the hope is that uh with the help of the international community paying attention to Nicaragua and also paying attention to the way that uh international scientific projects are developed could help you know to bring some sense into this horrible situation okay thank you very much indeed it's it's a challenging question and I have a second question for Chris McEntee and it is based on an interesting graph that you you showed about the public trust in science and the question makes reference to the difference that we could see between united states for instance and south america the question is how can we as researchers increase the trust of population in science in countries where leaders had the other way undervaluing scientific knowledge and the the person makes the example of Brazil well it's a very difficult question of course um I my own view is that perhaps the way to start is locally with your own communities and citizens and raise it from the grassroots up um and I think that if we it's not as serious in the united states of course with the top level government denying science but it's not great in the united states and what we see is that at the local level or even at the major urban areas the um the governments are not they're not following really the the non scientific advice whether it's climate change or hazards or disasters or whatever so my suggestion would be start locally and try to spread it through the grassroots as best you can and to also not be afraid to speak out and correct the record I think covid is very interesting because there's a lot of scientific uncertainty in covid 19 but what we see in the daily briefings is words from the top scientists saying there's a lot we don't know however we do think if you do x y and z that's the best way we can protect you right now um and so you know we hear a lot about um on the climate change side um kind of the the focus on the uncertainty part and I think it's important for scientists to speak about uncertainty but also to say but based on the best information we have today this is what we think needs to be done um and so that would be my suggestion it's not a satisfying one because I'd like to see it differently in brazil and elsewhere I think your your reply was satisfying indeed and uh it's um of course it's another challenging question so of course uh we are not getting to the final solution but I mean the discussion is interesting uh now I have um question for claudia and uh you know uh we several of you speakers today spoke about uh scientists get things or not into politics and you claudia advocated that uh scientists should stick on their own business and be careful in getting into politics but the the person uh remarks that it's not easy to set the boundary so uh because you know politics is many things and when you uh when you present an opinion to the public an opinion or let's say a research results in a way you are already getting into politics so can you clarify what what is your your view on this so what does it mean that scientists should not get into politics well I'm not sure that was really the message I wanted to pass that scientists should not get into politics and I apologize if that came across my my presentation uh actually I think we as individuals we have opinions and you don't need always to represent the the the community that you are working with as it doesn't matter if you are a scientist or if you are the person that collect the garbage you must have an opinion on controversial issues and you should stand up and demonstrate them when necessary what is your opinion and when you think and you believe strongly that they are wrong so I don't really think that scientists should be a kind of a special species that stays in a bubble and is super careful at expressing their own opinions of course when it's about scientific facts you should be uh loyal to to the to the facts to the data that you have and you be should be transparent and and uh working full integrity but besides that you also individuals you vote you you must have an opinion about about all the things the crazy things that are going on and you should express them and I think that this idea that I actually think it's very dangerous to think that scientists should are some kind of a higher human beings at the at the different level and they should not get involved they should get involved so that we don't end up in situations like we have now and like George just presented I think we should act before we reach to that point and if you see now and if you look at history in fact the democracy is not the naturals of history it's actually the opposite it's the it's the exception to the rule I'm not sure I reply to your question or yes yes excellently excellently and I think you are very clear and now I have a couple of questions that I can condense into one for Jonathan I think and the first is was posted in in the chat so you Jonathan I think you saw it already and it says cooperation better than competition but also public discussion between different scientists possibly with opposing opinions will improve the public trust in science but on the other end we got another question which is how can we succeed in getting a sustainable future when there are also within the scientific community diversity of opinions which are very relevant and sometimes controversial so Jonathan yeah okay that's um yeah it's a good question um you know what uh I think I I I don't know I would like to steer that question back to the point I made about transparency and um honesty I think it's apps and this and it goes back to trust I think it's absolutely essential that if we don't know or if we're unsure we say we don't know and we say we're unsure because we do anything else we we destroy that relationship we have with whoever we're communicating with and I think the more honest we are with the public and we don't treat them like uh I'm not saying we do but like idiots like they don't know or if we try and hide behind some kind of false sense of intellectual superiority or something or hide behind some kind of scientific mumbo jumbo and you know oh we're the experts are you there's no way you would know about this then I think you know that's that that is what's going to damage you but I really do feel that we need to um um uh be honest when when we don't know the answers I yeah I leave it at that okay thank you thank you very much now it's um I would like to ask the panelists a question which is uh which doesn't have a um predefined the recipient but I think I would like to address it to Silvia and the question is related to uh the policy in during the current crisis of founding agencies which are cancelling grants and cutting funds for disciplines that do not seem as a priority uh to uh with respect to the COVID-19 outbreak and the the question says that this will definitely have a negative effect on geo sciences and so what are your thoughts about this problem how can we deliver an efficient message to to avoid this type of problem again I would like to address this question to you Silvia given this subject of your of your speeches it's not easy to to reply because uh funds are always uh little and so I understand if in a moment of crisis crisis it is normal that we have to use uh um money in the best way the problem that is is a general in my opinion geo science is not um is not has not credit in society I don't know in other countries but in Italy geologists are not considered so so prominent scientists and this is the result of a lot of reasons in my opinion and in part depends also on our uh thoughts uh I think that the authoritative of geo of geo science must must be promoted by ourselves firstly and we have to to find as I I said that we have to find the the the more effective way to to put the society in the condition to understand how much geo science is important especially in the in the in the future crisis that more or less we have we have to we will have to to address so uh my opinion is that it is important to disseminate geo science in society to find the space in the in the communication of science and also to start from schools uh to to to disseminate geo science knowledge because um knowledge implies awareness and awareness implies responsibilities and this is valid at all level in society for politicians for citizens for media but we hope to disseminate we hope to to valorize to give value to our knowledge to make aware society that our contribution it is important because we are expert of the earth and the earth in this moment is um needs uh some protection some some strategies to to to allow our survival on this planet so um I think that there is a lot of things to do at different levels as individuals geo science as individual as organizations um it's complicated but I am confident that we we try now we are already five minutes late but I would like to ask one final very quick question for a quick answer and could be asked to every one of you so I just toss my coin and I would like to ask it to Claudia so the question is two best words are essential integrity and freedom do we have it globally so what is your perception Claudia and are we at risk at the global level to lose integrity freedom oh that's I look into my magic in my crystal ball and I will tell you what what I think I like to think that in Europe no we are not at the edge of the cliff but we have to remain vigilant um you know that this crisis in my opinion and surprisingly has probably made the union stronger despite some hiccups at the beginning I really believe and the and the the signals have been positive that in the next multi-annual financial framework that there will be more efforts put so economically for increasing the budget for science not just for the pandemic or pandemic related directly related issues but generally for science so I'm I'm I'm positive about that and I think we need a strong union because without that everything falls apart and we just go back 60 years in history and we will be in the same spot where we were so no I I'm positive but as I said we need to remain vigilant and and and really act when we know the things are going in the wrong direction thank you Claudia I'm really excited by this event and I would like to close with a final remark by myself indeed one of that statement one of the lessons that we learned today is that we basically we reinforced today because we knew it already is that under a crisis cooperation is better than competition so within this perspective I would like to to announce that just a couple of hours ago EGU and other five sister associations including AGU, JPG, GSA, GSL and AOGS signed a proclamation and the proclamation is now published on the EGU website it's a proclamation in favor of international cooperation in scientific research it's a commitment to work together to support and promote all forms of geoscience research so I think it fits nicely in the context of the event and discussion that we had today I think once again the convenience the speakers and the audience and also I would like to thank Chloe and the EGU staff for putting this event together