The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the life sciences

The COVID-19 outbreak has posed an unprecedented challenge to humanity and science. On the one side, public and private incentives have been put in place to promptly allocate resources toward research areas strictly related to the COVID-19 emergency. But on the flip side, research in many fields not directly related to the pandemic has lagged behind. In this paper, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on world scientific production in the life sciences. We investigate how the usage of medical subject headings (MeSH) has changed following the outbreak. We estimate through a difference-in-differences approach the impact of COVID-19 on scientific production through PubMed. We find that COVID-related research topics have risen to prominence, displaced clinical publications, diverted funds away from research areas not directly related to COVID-19 and that the number of publications on clinical trials in unrelated fields has contracted. Our results call for urgent targeted policy interventions to reactivate biomedical research in areas that have been neglected by the COVID-19 emergency

Adapting to Disruptions: Flexibility as a Pillar of Supply Chain Resilience

Supply chain disruptions cause shortages of raw material and products. To increase resilience, i.e., the ability to cope with shocks, substituting goods in established supply chains can become an effective alternative to creating new distribution links. We demonstrate its impact on supply deficits through a detailed analysis of the US opioid distribution system. Reconstructing 40 billion empirical distribution paths, our data-driven model allows a unique inspection of policies that increase the substitution flexibility. Our approach enables policymakers to quantify the trade-off between increasing flexibility, i.e., reduced supply deficits, and increasing complexity of the supply chain, which could make it more expensive to operate

Brain-Circulation Network: The Global Mobility of the Life Scientists

Global mobility and migration of scientists is an important modern phenomenon with economic and political implications. As scientists become ever more footloose it is important to identify general patterns and regularities at a global scale. At the same time cities, and especially global cities, have become impor- tant loci of economic and scientific activity. Limiting research to international migration, would disregard the importance of local innovation systems. The analysis of the mobility and brain circulation patterns at global scale remains challenging, due to difficulties in obtaining individual level mobility data. In this work we propose a methodology to trace intercity and international mobility through bibliographic records. We reconstruct the intercity and international mobility network of 3.7 Million Life Scientists moving between 9,745 cities. We present several features of the extracted network, offer evidence that the international innovation system is marked by national borders and linguistic similarity and show that international mo- bility largely contributes to the scientific output of national research systems. Moreover we find evidence to suggest that global cities attract highly productive scientist early in their careers

Understanding Online Migration Decisions Following the Banning of Radical Communities

The proliferation of radical online communities and their violent offshoots has sparked great societal concern. However, the current practice of banning such communities from mainstream platforms has unintended consequences: (I) the further radicalization of their members in fringe platforms where they migrate; and (ii) the spillover of harmful content from fringe back onto mainstream platforms. Here, in a large observational study on two banned subreddits, r/The\_Donald and r/fatpeoplehate, we examine how factors associated with the RECRO radicalization framework relate to users' migration decisions. Specifically, we quantify how these factors affect users' decisions to post on fringe platforms and, for those who do, whether they continue posting on the mainstream platform. Our results show that individual-level factors, those relating to the behavior of users, are associated with the decision to post on the fringe platform. Whereas social-level factors, users' connection with the radical community, only affect the propensity to be coactive on both platforms. Overall, our findings pave the way for evidence-based moderation policies, as the decisions to migrate and remain coactive amplify unintended consequences of community bans.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, 3 table

Spillover of Antisocial Behavior from Fringe Platforms: The Unintended Consequences of Community Banning

Online platforms face pressure to keep their communities civil and respectful. Thus, the bannings of problematic online communities from mainstream platforms like Reddit and Facebook are often met with enthusiastic public reactions. However, this policy can lead users to migrate to alternative fringe platforms with lower moderation standards and where antisocial behaviors like trolling and harassment are widely accepted. As users of these communities often remain \ca across mainstream and fringe platforms, antisocial behaviors may spill over onto the mainstream platform. We study this possible spillover by analyzing around $70,000$ users from three banned communities that migrated to fringe platforms: r/The\_Donald, r/GenderCritical, and r/Incels. Using a difference-in-differences design, we contrast \ca users with matched counterparts to estimate the causal effect of fringe platform participation on users' antisocial behavior on Reddit. Our results show that participating in the fringe communities increases users' toxicity on Reddit (as measured by Perspective API) and involvement with subreddits similar to the banned community -- which often also breach platform norms. The effect intensifies with time and exposure to the fringe platform. In short, we find evidence for a spillover of antisocial behavior from fringe platforms onto Reddit via co-participation.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, submitte

Puedes no ser capaz de hacer algo al respecto, pero puedes sacar lo mejor de la situación: Un análisis cualitativo de experiencias relacionadas con la pandemia en seis países europeos

The complex system of stressors related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected the global population, provoking a broad range of psychological reactions. Although numerous studies have investigated the mental health impact of COVID-19, qualitative research and cross-country comparisons are still rare.El complejo sistema de factores estresantes relacionados con la pandemia por la COVID-19 ha afectado a la población mundial, generando un amplio rango de reacciones psicológicas. A pesar de que múltiples estudios han investigado el impacto sobre la salud mental de la COVID-19, las investigaciones cualitativas y las comparaciones entre países aún son infrecuentes

The mobility of scientists and inventors: patterns and determinants

Life Scientists working both at Universities and private institutions are very mobile. This fact is reflected both in their tendency to move globally, from city to city, as well as from institution to institution. This thesis addresses several questions regarding the mobility patterns of these scientists and tests possible determinants for their relocation choice. We develop a novel dataset tracking the mobility of 3.7 million scientists across 9,745 cities over two decades. We show that mobility is marked by national borders and shared languages and that the mobility network is dominated by a small set of “global cities”. We also find that only a few countries clearly benefit from international exchange. Moreover, we find that young and prolific researchers gravitate towards these “global cities”. We use the mobility data to show how state and federal Stem Cell funding restrictions in the US have affected the spatial distribution of scientists as well as their propensity to leave the country. In fact we find that differential state and federal approaches to Stem Cell research has had the overall effect of geographically concentrating scientists and averting an exodus of these researchers. Finally, we analyze the impact of M&As in the Pharmaceutical Sector to establish if these shocks cause a higher than average turnover. High turnover of R&D personnel in this R&D intensive sector is an undesirable outcome. We do in fact find that turnover is higher following an acquisition. However, as noted elsewhere, acquired companies experience often financial distress before the event and so defection starts even before the deal takes place

Talent goes to global cities: The world network of scientists’ mobility

Global cities boast higher rates of innovation as measured through patent and scientific production. However, the source of the location advantage of innovation hubs is still debated in the literature, with arguments ranging from localized knowledge spillovers to network effects. Thanks to an extensive data set of individual scientist career paths, we shed new light on the role of scientist location choices in determining the superior innovative performance of global cities. We analyze the career paths of around two million researchers over a decade across more than two thousand cities around the globe. First, we show that scientists active in global cities are more productive in terms of citation weighted publications. We then show that this superior performance is in part driven by highly prolific scientists moving and remaining preferentially in global cities, i.e., central cities in the international scientist mobility network. The overall picture that emerges is that global cities are better positioned to attract and retain prolific scientists than more peripheral cities.ISSN:0048-7333ISSN:1873-762