Goetz is a senior Fulbright Scholar and worked for two years at the College de France in Paris. He has served on several national and international advisory boards, including the Tourette Syndrome Association Scientific Advisory Board and Dystonia Medical Research Foundation Advisory Board. He is a reviewer for several journals and is a McHenry Award recipient of the American Academy of Neurology. He is a member of the Movement Disorder Society, the American Neurological Association, the American Academy of Neurology, The American Olser Society, and the French Neurological Society.

He has received the American Academy of Neurology Senior Research Award in Movement Disorders (2015) and the Presidential Stanley Fahn Award from the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (2009). He is the president-elect of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

His major interest is the pharmacology of various movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome, Huntington’s disease and pharmacologic studies of dystonia. He is particularly interested in non-motor aspects of movement disorders, including specifically, hallucinations, cognitive decline and depression. Further research efforts have focused on scale development for evaluating movement disorders, and he has led the Movement Disorder Society Task Force to develop a new version of the UPDRS, termed the MDS-UPDRS, unveiled in 2008. He has a special interest in placebo effects and how they influence the interpretation of clinical trials in Parkinson’s disease and dyskinesia. He has also led pharmacologic and surgical efforts to treat movement disorders.