In itself, a ball is an enjoyable event. But sometimes we have to deal with the shortcomings of everyday life. Like this one: the federal government is currently planning legislation that will support publications which meet certain quality criteria. One crucial criterion is missing from the list: science. We are not the only ones who find this peculiar.

In an interview after the ceremony in Stockholm last weekend, Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger said that he was “quite astonished that science journalism is not being promoted accordingly, especially in the current situation.”  He added: “I would very much like to see more people from Austria winning the Nobel Prize in the future. For that, you have to anchor science in people’s minds very early on as something quite normal, everyday, and not as something special that only interests a few exotics,” Zeilinger said, “or to put it quite wickedly: if you want it to take as long as possible for there to be another Nobel Prize in Austria, then you put as little as possible into science journalism.”

The good news is that this can still be changed by getting as many people as possible to comment on the draft law and thus give the government something to think about. Thomas König (IHS) explains in detail how this can be done in the Standard. And here you can go directly to the page on the parliament’s homepage.

Until December 19, there is still time to correct this error in the draft with a statement. After that, we can get back to the ball.