Liebe Unterstützer*innen,

Kritik und offene Diskussionen sind elementare Werte guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis, aber wir fürchten, dass diese bei unserer Diskussion im March Meeting Forum der Amerikanischen Physikalischen Gesellschaft (APS) gefehlt haben. Wir haben keine klaren Antworten dazu bekommen, wie die virtuelle Komponente des nächsten March Meetings aussehen wird und die meisten unserer Fragen und Kritiken bleiben unbeantwortet. Und wie ihr selbst feststellen könnt, haben wir bis heute keine öffentliche Antwort auf unserer Petitionsseite erhalten.
Trauriger Höhepunkt dieser Diskussion war die Schließung des Threads durch den/die Admin vor einer Woche mit dem Hinweis das Konferenz-Komitee per Email zu kontaktieren.

We akzeptieren dieses abrupte Ende nicht und werde in Zukunft versuchen den öffentlichen Druck mit eurer Hilfe zu erhöhen. 

Aus Gründen der Transparenz fügen wir unsere letzte Email an die APS-Verantwortlichen an:

Dear APS Committee on Scientific Meetings, dear Mr. Hunter,

We are writing to you to express our disappointment and bafflement on how the discussion of our petition directed to the APS was managed and suddenly closed in the APS March Meeting forum.

This is not the way a scientific society should react to criticism that is founded on scientific arguments referenced in our petition; especially, since we declined beforehand the option of contacting the APS Committee on Scientific Meetings via email for reasons of transparency and because we have not yet received any reply from email contact regarding the petition.

Therefore, we decided to repost our latest contribution from the forum and this email here on our petition website. We insist on conducting the discussion on future scientific meetings publicly and since we have not heard from your side after closing down the petition thread in the forum we sadly believe that public pressure is needed to get answers to our questions.

Best regards,
authors of the petition change.org/GreenerAcademia

Darüber hinaus posten wir hier unseren letzten Beitrag im APS Forum (Link), wobei wir Kommentare in eckigen Klammern eingefügt haben:

Dear *** [APS-Verantwortliche aus Achtung der Privatsphäre zensiert],

Thank you for your interest in our petition and for mentioning the measures that the APS is taking to provide sustainable and diverse international meetings, but as mentioned earlier in this thread, we have the following questions and comments:

Are there any figures how the increased awareness of the environmental impact of APS’ meetings has improved the bottom line? Is there a trend in conference sites adapting to greener standards or is this a case of choosing the most acceptable?

Regarding the carbon offset option we have the following criticism: It is opposed to diversity and inclusion efforts, GHG [GreenHouse Gas] compensation is at most an interim solution, and delegating responsibility and costs to attendees bears the risk of creating two classes of participants. Moreover, how many members contributed to this offset option? Instead of making sustainable behavior more expensive by means of an offset, the APS should encourage sustainable behavior by awarding benefits such as significantly reduces attendance fees.

We learned in this forum that GHG impact figures were provided to groups responsible for selecting meeting locations. Is there any information that those figures influence the decision on meeting locations and how much GHG is saved by that?

We are glad to hear that a virtual component is planned for the March Meeting 2022. In our petition we explicitly support remote attendance only under the condition that it is equally catered for, i.e., all tutorials, sessions, exhibitions etc. are accessible online. Can this be assured for the APS March Meeting 2022? Moreover, it would be crucial to encourage virtual participation by significantly reduced attendance fees compared to the on-site option. Can you already estimate the difference between the two attendance fees?

Thank you for pointing out the interesting article on APS’ online meeting efforts in 2020 [https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202101/lessons.cfm]. Based on this we can imagine that a full-scale in-person and virtual meeting is probably very expensive. Right now, given that the finances of online meetings are not as easily calculable, it sounds like March 2022 is going to be a traditional live meeting with some sort of tacked-on online component and many people will be very hesitant to use the latter if it seems like a second-class option.

There is a real possibility that this will be a step backwards regarding sustainability, diversity, inclusion, and global health risks if online participation is only adopted by those that would not otherwise have participated. Are you somehow preparing to market the online component especially to non-locals? People need to know that APS is confident in the quality of the virtual participation also in comparison to the live one.

We believe that this step must be taken in view of

• the climate change that is causing disastrous heat waves and droughts right now in the western US*,
• diversity and inclusion,
• and global health risks as new mutants of the Corona virus are spreading around the globe.

*and many other places around the world!