Tag Archives: sharing

The power of data shared

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In a world of interdisciplinary research, we need to make data freely available, says Katie Ember

Better Science through Better Data writing competition winner Katie Ember

Every Monday in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Chemistry, the Campbell group gather in Room 233 for a lab meeting. If you’re hosting the meeting, you bring cake. Or you forget and everyone pretends they’re not feeling a bit hungry and disappointed. Then, two scientists in the group present that month’s work.

Every Friday in the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, a fifteen minute cycle from the School of Chemistry, the Forbes group file into the first floor meeting room. After battling with the “motion-activated” lights, we all talk through what we’ve achieved that week.

Teamwork

The reason I go to two lab meetings in one week is because I’m attempting to detect liver damage using laser light. It’s multidisciplinary and it’s hard: requiring input from biologists, physicists and transplant surgeons from different institutes. The end result is that I spend about four hours each week not doing science but discussing it. Whilst this may seem like a strange way to do research, I cannot overstate how important it is. Continue reading →

The discomfort is worth it: share more

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Making sure to communicate with the public is hard and takes time. Scientists should keep doing it, says Jessica Eise.

When David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford, wrote the New York Times bestseller Incognito, I read it voraciously. The world of the mind opened to me. My subconscious brain took on an entirely new meaning to me. Eagleman’s research felt salient, relevant, and crucial to our understanding and progress as a species.

Knowledge-sharing

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The importance of broadening science communication

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Though well-equipped with scientific training and expertise, scientists need to be aware of the resources available to help them share their work with a public audience, learns Aliyah Weinstein.

Recently, more and more emphasis has been put on scientists to communicate their research to public audiences. National scientific organizations such as the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the American Society for Cell Biology encourage their members to reach beyond the bench, and many blogs help scientists describe their research to wider audiences. At the University of Pittsburgh, where I’m working on my PhD, graduate student and postdoc organizations on campus share their excitement about science with the public through partnerships with local museums and school districts.

books

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Why should we work so hard to make our work reproducible?

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Most scientific work isn’t reproducible. Andy Tay explains why that’s a problem.

The call for reproducibility has never been stronger in the history of science. Since two major pharmaceutical companies, Amgen and Bayer, reported in 2011/12 that their scientists were unable to replicate 80-90% of the findings in landmark papers, scientific news outlets have caught up on the issue. Their reports have catalyzed conversations among stakeholders (policy makers, funding agencies and scientists) to improve reproducibility in science.

Copyright: LEGO

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There are a lot of reasons why reproducibility is so important, and why Amgen and Bayer’s results caused such controversy. I’ll start at the individual level. Continue reading →

Why don’t scientists always share their data?

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Reproducibility is the cornerstone of science, and it can be compromised by insufficient data in peer-reviewed publications. Should scientists reveal everything?

Publishing Better Science through Better Data writing competition winner Emma Vander Ende.

One of the foundations of science is its reproducibility. Without it, results are not verifiable and are therefore not believable. But even if a published result is true, there is a chance it might not be reproducible, which introduces a plethora of problems for science.

Irreproducible experiments severely limit the ability of the scientific community to build on results and advance the field. This can happen when scientists don’t share enough data, or details of their experiments in papers, and it happens quite frequently.

So why might a scientist not share their data?

drugs

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