New Nature Special: Challenges in irreproducible Research

Posted: April 30th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: found on the net | Tags: , , | Comments Off on New Nature Special: Challenges in irreproducible Research

 

Replication and reproducibility are rare.

nature has published a new special issue on challenges in irreproducible research. The journal addresses the challenges and barriers of reproducibel research:

No research paper can ever be considered to be the final word, and the replication and corroboration of research results is key to the scientific process. In studying complex entities, especially animals and human beings, the complexity of the system and of the techniques can all too easily lead to results that seem robust in the lab, and valid to editors and referees of journals, but which do not stand the test of further studies. Nature has published a series of articles about the worrying extent to which research results have been found wanting in this respect. The editors of Nature and the Nature life sciences research journals have also taken substantive steps to put our own houses in order, in improving the transparency and robustness of what we publish. Journals, research laboratories and institutions and funders all have an interest in tackling issues of irreproducibility. We hope that the articles contained in this collection will help.

All articles within this issue are available free of charge. The table of contents is available here.

Graphic: pasukaru76, www.flickr.com


Why Replications & Data Availability matter: The Case of Rogoff and Reinhart

Posted: April 18th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: found on the net | Tags: , , | 1 Comment »

Yesterday several blogs, journals and news agencies spread the news: The US star economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart are in trouble, because a paper of them -which had and has a considerable influence on worldwide economic policy- contains at least one serious error.

Their paper “Growth in a Time of Debt” was published in the flagship of economic research – the American Economic Review (AER) with also has a data availability policy that was evaluated in the course of our research project.
Important political assumptions and decisions were based on the research of Rogoff and Reinhart:  Olli Rehm, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro and vice president of the European Commission and also the US-Republican Paul Ryan argued with the findings of Rogoff and Reinhart to justify austerity economics. Read the rest of this entry »


New Knowledge Exchange Publication: “The Value of Research Data”

Posted: April 16th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Report, Workshop | Tags: , , | 1 Comment »

KE-brosch_300Last week I’ve been in Berlin and took part in the workshop “Making Data Count: Research data availability and research assessment” hosted by Knowledge Exchange (KE), a 2005 established cooperation between five research funders.

The aim of the workshop was to bring experts and stakeholders from research institutions, universities, scholarly societies and funding agencies together in order to review, discuss and build on possibilities to implement the culture of sharing and to integrate publication of data into research assessment procedures. Read the rest of this entry »


JoRD Project presents Results

Posted: April 2nd, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Data Policy, Projects | Comments Off on JoRD Project presents Results

richtliThe JoRD-project (Journal Research Data Policies ) recently has published some final results. As mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, the JoRD-project -which was funded by JISC as part of its Digital Infrastructure Programme- aims to conduct a feasibility study into the scope and shape of a sustainable service that will collate and summarise journal data policies. The purpose of the service would be to provide a ready reference source of easily accessible, standardised, accurate and clear guidance and information, on the journal policy landscape relating to research data. Read the rest of this entry »