On November 10 and 11 2022, the Niels-Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen organized the fourth Open World Conference. Under the heading “Open Science and Global Dangers" the organizers brought together an interdisciplinary set of speakers and audience to discuss dilemmas of openness in research and research collaboration. The conference was inspired by Niels Bohr’s letter to the United Nations in 1950, where he recommended openness in science to overcome the dangers posed by nuclear armaments.
IFSH researcher Dr. Moritz Kütt collaborated with Prof. Dr. Astrid Kause (Leuphana University, Lüneburg) to give a keynote address “What remains to be done to achieve open, global science?” on the first day of the conference. Both gave answers to the question in the talk’s title based on the two global challenges nuclear weapons and climate change. They discussed that addressing these challenges, science should enable an open information exchange, be conducted in a global way involving affected states irrespective of state power and be open towards the general public.
Other speakers of the conference included, among others, Naomi Oreskes (Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard), Ole Wæver (Professor of International Relations, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen) and Zia Mian (Physicist and co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University).