In times like these, it is almost impossible not to write an editorial about the impact of the new US administration on the scientific community. There is serious pressure on academic freedom and on funding for science. Moreover, this administration is undermining the credibility of scientists worldwide. It seems that science has become an opinion rather than a societal endeavor based on evidence and scrutinized by independent sources. It scares me and gives me a feeling of panic.

As a speed skater in the Netherlands, I’m a hopeful and positive person. Skating on natural ice is like being in Valhalla. But the combination of global warming and being at a latitude where “King Winter” visits less often is making it harder and harder to experience the magic of “nature ice.” Still, every fall I hope for a winter with a few weeks of natural ice on the lakes and canals. But being a hopeful and positive person doesn’t make me immune to losing sleep and having dark thoughts. How can we turn panic and despair into a more useful feeling that will empower and energize us? I believe that international cooperation could be the key to overcoming the current sentiment.

Looking for what unites us, rather than what divides us, will take us further than political polarization. Our International Journal Sports Physiology and Performance (IJSPP) is a powerful vehicle for collaboration. Collaborative projects and co-authored publications unite people from around the world and serve as a community for scientists with common goals.

Working together is not always easy. It often requires a mindset in which we take off our masks and show our vulnerabilities. In my own experience, collaboration, whether at local, national, international, and/or continental level, has always been a joy. It is not only the only way, it is also something hopeful. A good example of collaboration is the recent systematic review by Rosenblat et al¹ in Sports Medicine on training-intensity-distribution interventions. In this review, the authors performed both a systematic review and a network meta-analysis in which they pooled the available data from the collaborating laboratories. The limited data collected in the individual labs could never fully answer their question, but their combined data could. One of the Key Points of the manuscript was that, and I quote, “a high degree of collaboration, communication, and transparency between laboratories made this study achievable, and we strongly encourage multicenter collaboration among sports science researchers to improve statistical power to detect small, but important, effects of training interventions on performance outcomes.”

Manuscripts like Rosenblat et al’s¹ are good examples for IJSPP, and I encourage our contributors to follow this example. Sincere cooperation means giving meaning to one’s own life and to a struggling global society. This is where my hope lies.