Tim Errington: Barriers to conducting replications – challenges or opportunities?
Interpretation of scientific findings requires the reader to understand what was being tested, how it was tes- ted, how it was analyzed, and what results were obtained. Scientific articles are the primary means to communicate these pieces of information. However, what constitutes as enough information is not always clear or known and varies by discipline, journal, and scientist. Additionally, this varies over time as established methodologies mature and new methodologies emerge.
This presentation will focus on the barriers encountered when gathering this information as part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (https://osf.io/ e81xl/wiki/home/), a project to assess reproducibility rates, predictors of reproducibility, and common obstacles to conducting replications in preclinical cancer biology. The replications illustrate some of the challenges and opportunities in how research is conducted and communicated.
Tim Errington
Director of Research, Center for Open Science
Tim Errington is the Director of Research at the Center for Open Science (COS), a non-profit organization in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA that has a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. In this role, Tim collaborates with researchers and stakeholders across scientific disciplines and organizations on projects aimed to understand the current research process and to evaluate initiatives designed to increase reproducibility and openness of scientific research.
Tim earned a B.S. degree in both Biology and Chemistry from St. Lawrence University, an M.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology from the University of Virginia.