life-twists

  A Reason to Leave Home   The title of this blog is “life-twists.” One of the biggest twists in my life was my move to Saudi Arabia in September 2009. Before moving to Saudi Arabia, I worked for more than 20 years in a government-funded research center in Germany. I was head of a research team developing polymeric membranes for gas and liquid separations most of this time. It was an excellent time, and I loved my work, my colleagues, and even my bosses. But things changed for the worse after two new directors were appointed (rumors say that one of these two was fired recently, too late for me). Sometimes you meet people in life with whom you are not compatible; don’t wait too long, leave them alone, focus on your goals and ambitions!   New Horizons I searched for a new position, and four more group leaders did the same.   By a happy coincidence, I learned during a vacation in Norway that Saudi Arabia had started to build a new technical university, the private King ...

What is our motivation to do research? It can be curiosity, or we want to invent something which makes our life easier or healthier, or we are looking for more sustainable production processes. There are many different motivations. One which is usually not mentioned is fame. Most of us scientists want to discover and present something, which gets us much attention. We want to be highly cited. Nothing wrong with this, but one should not trust researchers whose primary motivation is this craving for attention. A popular topic is the fight against climate change. In my future post, I will show how fame-hungry scientists are sometimes not telling the whole truth.  In preparation, will be published in about eight weeks