Today I spoke up at a #FENS2022 discussion event about pandemic effects on mentoring. I spoke about my frustration regarding transmission mitigation at the meeting. I sorta highjacked the discussion and I'm sorry about that, but I just couldn't not say anything and 1/n
that event seemed the most appropriate platform to get my message across. Particularly given that the discussion was framed as the pandemic being something that happened in the past. I shared my anxieties about getting COVID, bringing it home to my unvaxxed son etc. 2/n
I spoke about the example role that scientist and organizers have, the care that neuroscientist should have about brains and the role of superspreader events etc. 3/n
My concerns also stem from being a good mentor to my underprivileged students and that context I couldn't go into deeper. This is a much longer story about the troubles for students coming from lower income countries and how this is compounded by concerns about COVID. 4/n
Other scientists have asked me the past to publicly expand a bit more on my experiences with bringing my students to international meetings from a lower income country. Here I will explain some of the problems I see, some of which are specific to #FENS2022, and 5/n
some of which are more generally applicable to meetings organized in Europe/US. Here we go: 6/n
Problem #1: $$$$ My grant has some money for travel, but not a lot. Grant was funded 2.5 years ago. 1 dollar was then 5.674 Turkish liras, now it is 17.32 TL. What was little then is woefully short now. Still I try to somehow take each PhD students to an inter'l meeting. 7/n
We figured that with two students from a underprivileged country applying to travel grants, we would hopefully get one and took this gamble. 8/n
Problem #2: you have to do registration before you can know that you receive a travel award. That money was spend from the grant and you need proof of attendance etc according to university rules. So once we register there is no backing out. 9/n
If a student from lower income country should attend with personal funds, is that an acceptable financial risk for them to take? I say not. I say that travel fellowships still only are available for financially privileged/funded students that can somehow accept that risk. 10/n
Since this meeting coincides with vacation season in Europe and a holiday in Turkey ticket prices rose tremendously over the past few months. But my university has rules about spending money on flights and I have to show proof of attendance before I can close the advance 11/n
As I can also only have one advance open at the same time, that means I have to either decide to book cheap tickets and not spend money on other research activities until the meeting is over OR risk prices increasing. I had to spend some grant money over the past few months 12/n
And so the tickets became expensive and now I'm paying from my personal funds to book a one bedroom Airbnb where we sleep with 3 people. 13/n
Of course you can say that maybe students can pay for some things themselves, but I know what they make and I cannot ask for this. Just putting things into context, the highest level PhD student fellowship on funded grants here is $317/month. 14/n
Problem #3: How does this interact with COVID? Well, if one of us gets COVID, and we are having to isolate in Paris, that will financially bankrupt them or me. 15/n
We spoke about this risk before the meeting and agreed that we would wear masks indoors. THINKING THAT MOST OTHERS WOULD ALSO DO THIS! 16/n
Some people say we should be understanding towards others without masks b/c everyone has had a rough 2 years and it is so nice to socialize now and attend a meeting. Full agreement on socializing and holding meetings. However, I do not feel kindly towards the unmasked masses 17/n
It is a minor inconvenience to mask, but it is a major inconvenience to get long-COVID or go financially under for a "unrestricted" meeting. 18/n
Yes, there are no mask mandates. BUT an organization can do so much scicomm about risk. Provide masks at every room. Have screensavers with infographics. Rapid tests. Show the right example amongst leadership etc. 19/n
It will not be 100% effective, but it will surely be better. Not doing anything communicates that you do not care or that measures are useless. 20/n
This meeting is basically off the books for any immunocompromised people. It is also off the books for my lab, because the compounded risks are not worth it 21/n
About meetings in general: Over the past decade I see a trend of meetings wanting to go more "retreat"y and fancier ($$$). I find this very concerning, because you are more and more selecting for more privileged scientists. Within the Western world also. 22/n
Simultaneously these societies are seeing declining memberships... Please consider organizing meetings in cities where cheaper options are available. Yes, it is great that you are now a well funded senior scientist and you could really use some extra R&R after the pandemic 23/
But your free holiday is other people's barrier to partaking in international meetings at all. All meetings: consider building travel fellowship options and deadlines where the registration can be fully refunded when the application is rejected. 24/
All meetings: when you have criteria for underprivileged students from country categorizations along the lines of World Bank Data, consider that within a year the situation can change completely for a country and that is not reflected in that data. 25/
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