Positioning Science

Science today stands at a crossroads. On one hand, it remains humanity’s most powerful tool for improving health, protecting the environment, and guiding societies through crises such as climate change and pandemics. On the other, it faces mounting pressures: political suppression, defunding, and the spread of misinformation that erode public trust and weaken democratic decision-making. Science is never isolated—it is shaped by, and in turn shapes, the societies in which it operates. This makes the defence of scientific integrity, openness, and inclusivity more urgent than ever.

In this panel, we will explore the position of science in today’s world: how it interfaces with industry, regulation, and society at large; how it can resist politicization; and how it must adapt to remain both rigorous and relevant in shaping a sustainable and equitable future. Yet, the challenges do not only come from outside. Within the scientific system itself, pressures toward careerism, competition, and overstating results—driven by metrics such as publication counts—risk undermining credibility and quality. Addressing both external threats and internal shortcomings will be essential if science is to maintain its authority, trustworthiness, and capacity to serve the public good.

The session will open with a keynote by Joeri Tijdink, psychiatrist and researcher, whose work focuses on research integrity and the culture of scientific practice. His introduction will be followed by reflections from three leading figures in occupational health in The Netherlands—Lex Burdorf, Dick Heederik, and Hans Kromhout—on how science relates to marketing, regulatory agencies, and industry, and how we can navigate these intersections.

To conclude, a panel of early-career scientists—Niki Marjerrison, Calvin Ge, and Stella May Gwini—will respond and share perspectives on the way forward, ensuring that the discussion bridges generations and speaks to the future of our field.

Panellists

Joeri Tijdink is an associate professor and principal investigator at Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc, and is affiliated with VU University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After studying medicine at Utrecht University (1999–2006) and specializing as a clinical psychiatrist in Amsterdam (2007–2012), he completed his PhD (2012–2015), entitled Publish & Perish: Research on Research and Researchers. His thesis focused on the impact of publication pressure on research quality and the mental health of researchers.

Joeri’s current research focuses on research integrity, reproducibility, research quality, mental well-being in academia, and research culture. He is leading several national and international research projects, including the TIER2 project (www.tier2-project.eu), which explores the future(s) of reproducibility and develops tools to support reproducibility practices. He is also a principal investigator in the EU-funded TRUSTparency project, which implements promotion plans for different stakeholders to foster reproducibility practices. In addition, he leads several projects aimed at supporting a responsible research culture in diverse academic settings and studies how early career researchers can be empowered to speak up. He initiated the national Akademiethermometer survey, which investigates the mental health of academics in the Netherlands.

Joeri is also the author of the book The Happy Academic – How to Thrive and Survive in Academia (2023), which offers guidance to early career researchers navigating the challenges of academic life. In his work, he consistently focuses on individual, cultural, and systemic factors that can help improve academia, with a strong emphasis on research quality, research culture and promoting mental health among researchers.

Alongside his research, he continues to work as a clinical psychiatrist. In 2022, he was appointed as a member of The Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, highlighting his commitment to improving research quality, strengthening the societal relevance of research, and fostering a more supportive academic environment for early career researchers.

Alex Burdorf is emeritus professor in public health. His current research interests focus on the bidirectional relationship between work and health, especially on interventions and policies to facilitate entering and maintaining paid employment among workers with chronic health problems. He is also interested in causal inference in observational studies, and how such evidence can guide practical implementation of improvements at the workplace.

Professor Hans Kromhout is an occupational hygiene and epidemiology specialist, based at the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His work has covered the health effects of chemical and physical (EMF) agents in the workplace and general environment. Hans has carried out large international studies in among others the rubber manufacturing industry, asphalt industry, industrial minerals industry, healthcare industry and agriculture. He has developed occupational exposure assessment tools for community-based studies on cancer, respiratory diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and reproductive health effects.

Dick Heederik is Professor of Health Risk Analysis and trained as epidemiologist with strong emphasis on occupational and environmental exposure assessment. His research career was in particular focused on respiratory diseases. He served various committees responsible for exposure standard setting in the work environment including The Netherlands Health Council (Dutch Expert Committee on Occupational Standards), the EU Scientific Committee on Exposure Standards (SCOEL) and when this committee was terminated and activities were carried over to ECHA Risk Assessment Committee. Over the years he experienced an increased contribution of epidemiological findings in risk assessment processes, an increased role of study quality evaluations in particular in for epidemiological evidence, more emphasis on conflicts of interest of committee members.

Dr. Niki Marjerrison is a postdoctoral researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the University of Oslo. She is currently working on a project investigating occupational and environmental PFAS exposure and cancer risk, as well as projects on offshore workers and firefighters. Her research focuses on improving the understanding of causes of occupational cancers and diseases, with the aim of contributing toeffective prevention.

Dr. Calvin Ge is a scientist at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). His research work spans across various elements of occupational health, including industrial hygiene, occupational exposure assessment, epidemiology, and health impact assessment. With his work, Calvin aims create policy and societal impact that improve wellbeing for all workers.

Dr StellaMay Gwini is a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University with special interest in improving occupational health outcomes for migrant workers, increasing research participation of culturally, ethnically and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations, improved consideration of ethnicity and race in provision of medical services (including therapeutics, precision medicine, therapies). She is a biostatistics and occupational disease epidemiology, with skills developed over many years in different medical fields through participation in various research programs in Australia and Internationally, including clinical trials, clinical registries, longitudinal studies within clinical research, public health and epidemiology.