Environmental Action Begins at Home
During the COP-26 meeting, I was chastised for asking the question of whether or not the carbon footprint of multiple sclerosis disease-modifying therapies could potentially be a factor in deciding on which treatment to choose. I opened a can of worms. I suggest you read the comments to my blog post, ‘How environmentally friendly is your DMT?’ to get an idea of the vitriol.
The point I was trying to make is that you have to try and start somewhere. If the carbon footprint of DMTs was made an issue then all manufacturers of DMTs would try and improve their products. Yes, patient choice would act as a nudge. In a similar way as charity should always begin at home, looking after the environment should also start at home with individual personal choices. Maybe you disagree?
On this issue, there is a great debate in this week’s BMJ on international travel to medical conferences.
Richard Smith, Viknesh Sounderajah & Ara Darzi. Head To Head: Have international in-person medical meetings had their day? BMJ 2021;375:n2345
The question I am asking myself as COVID-19 retreats and things start to get back to normal is ‘what should I do?’.
In academia, there is a correlation, or an association, between the metrics used for measuring academic success and invitations to disseminate knowledge, for example, giving keynote lectures at congresses and symposia, in-person attendance at advisory boards, steering committees, guideline committees, examination boards, teaching courses, invitations to write review articles or book chapters, etc. Most of these involve travel.
I recall an academic colleague telling me in the past that in addition to the metrics below, a clinical academic’s success can also be measured by academic air miles; i.e. the amount of flying in relation to their academic work. Pre-COVID-19 he may have had a point. However, since the start of COVID-19 and the reconfiguration of how we work, I would disagree. In reality, I have gotten so much more productive academically.
As an example, the following is a list of activities from last week that would have required international travel.
Monday — PhD Exam Board in the UAE University (Al Ain, UAE)
Tuesday — Advisory board meeting on an MS drug development programme (Paris, France)
Thursday — Keynote lecture at the Indian Academy of Neurology Conference (Bangalore, India) & BTKi trial steering committee meeting (Cambridge, MA, USA)
Friday — Lecture and panel discussion at a Japanese Neurology Meeting (Tokyo, Japan) & Lecture at a Portuguese Brain Health meeting (Lisbon, Portugal)
Sunday — European Charcot Foundation Board Meeting and Conference (Baveno, Italy)
In pre-COVID times I suspect I would have only been able to commit to two or three of these meetings. The other side of the coin is how much time have I saved by not travelling to these meetings, but used for productive work? So I don’t think I will be going to go back to the same old pattern of work. Why would I?
If you are interested, the following is a list of some of the metrics used for assessing the academic success
- Number of publications per year
- Number of citations per year
- Impact factor = is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year
- H-index = is the maximum value of h such that the given author has published at least h papers that have each been cited at least h times.
- i10-index = the number of publications with at least 10 citations
- Altmetrics = are non-traditional bibliometrics are an alternative to traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and h-index
- Grant income
- Number of patents
- Impact statements
- Number of PhD students
- Public engagement
- Etc.
General Disclaimer: Please note that the opinions expressed here are those of Professor Giovannoni and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry nor Barts Health NHS Trust.