For a while it was all the rage to adopt Wonder Woman’s famous stance and other body positions that allegedly pumped up your confidence – until more studies of the phenomenon failed to find the connection.
Preclinical research — the kind that takes place before testing on humans — often guides decisions about which potential treatments should continue to clinical trials. But attempts to replicate 50 studies found the odds of getting the same results were only about 50-50.
(Pexels/Artem Podrez)
Preclinical studies are an important part of biomedical research, often guiding future trials in humans. Failure to replicate research results suggests a need to increase the quality of studies.
Behind the scenes, natural history museums store biological samples from the field.
Ryan Stephens
Specimen preservation means researchers don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time they ask a new question, making it critical for the advancement of science. But many specimens are discarded or lost.
The research doesn’t say what some lawmakers suggest every time there’s a mass shooting.
Fredrick Tendong/Unsplash
Rising evidence shows that many psychology studies don’t stand up to added scrutiny. The problem has many scientists worried – but it could also encourage them to up their game.
Scientists are facing a reproducibility crisis.
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Kai Zhang, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Science is in a reproducibility crisis. This is driven in part by invalid statistical analyses that happen long after the data are collected – the opposite of how things are traditionally done.
What can an algorithm find when it reads a book?
Vasilyev Alexandr/Shutterstock.com
The journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently retracted several papers by a leading researcher on food and consumption. What does this mean for the researcher’s findings?
Biobanks can help scientists retain quality samples for future experiments.
Microgen/Shutterstock
There’s peer review – and then there’s peer review. With more knowledge you can dive in a little deeper and make a call about how reliable a science paper really is.
Playing violent video games doesn’t make kids more aggressive.
AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
Scientists are rewarded with funding and publications when they come up with innovative findings. But in the midst of a ‘reproducibility crisis,’ being new isn’t the only thing to value about research.
Science itself needs to be put under the microscope and carefully scrutinised to deal with its flaws.
Nattapat Jitrungruengnij/Shutterstock
We are observing two new phenomena. On one hand doubt is shed on the quality of entire scientific fields or sub-fields. On the other this doubt is played out in the open, in the media and blogosphere.
Step one is not being afraid to reexamine a site that’s been previously excavated.
Dominic O'Brien. Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation
A team of archaeologists strived to improve the reproducibility of their results, influencing their choices in the field, in the lab and during data analysis.
Opening up data and materials helps with research transparency.
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Partly in response to the so-called ‘reproducibility crisis’ in science, researchers are embracing a set of practices that aim to make the whole endeavor more transparent, more reliable – and better.
When new discoveries are jealously guarded under lock and key, science suffers.
Andy Wright
Embracing more rigorous scientific methods would mean getting science right more often than we currently do. But the way we value and reward scientists makes this a challenge.
Good science loses out when bad science gets the funding.
Shutterstock/Looker Studio
New studies on the quality of published research shows we could be wasting billions of dollars a year on bad science, to the neglect of good science projects.