Research integrity: Don't let transparency damage science

Lewandowsky, Stephan; Bishop, Dorothy V. M.

doi:10.1038/529459a

Cited by 83 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Indeed, there are many nuances and exceptions that I am glossing over. There is, of course, the risk that we will go too far in the other direction and impose so many burdens on scientists to make everything transparent that science will grind to a halt (Lewandowsky & Bishop, 2016). However, we are nowhere near having that problem.…”

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confidence: 91%

Quality Uncertainty Erodes Trust in Science

Vazire

2017

Collabra: Psychology

108

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When consumers of science (readers and reviewers) lack relevant details about the study design, data, and analyses, they cannot adequately evaluate the strength of a scientific study. Lack of transparency is common in science, and is encouraged by journals that place more emphasis on the aesthetic appeal of a manuscript than the robustness of its scientific claims. In doing this, journals are implicitly encouraging authors to do whatever it takes to obtain eye-catching results. To achieve this, researchers can use common research practices that beautify results at the expense of the robustness of those results (e.g., p-hacking). The problem is not engaging in these practices, but failing to disclose them. A car whose carburetor is duct-taped to the rest of the car might work perfectly fine, but the buyer has a right to know about the duct-taping. Without high levels of transparency in scientific publications, consumers of scientific manuscripts are in a similar position as buyers of used cars -they cannot reliably tell the difference between lemons and high quality findings. This phenomenon -quality uncertainty -has been shown to erode trust in economic markets, such as the used car market. The same problem threatens to erode trust in science. The solution is to increase transparency and give consumers of scientific research the information they need to accurately evaluate research. Transparency would also encourage researchers to be more careful in how they conduct their studies and write up their results. To make this happen, we must tie journals' reputations to their practices regarding transparency. Reviewers hold a great deal of power to make this happen, by demanding the transparency needed to rigorously evaluate scientific manuscripts. The public expects transparency from science, and appropriately so -we should be held to a higher standard than used car salespeople.

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confidence: 91%

Quality Uncertainty Erodes Trust in Science

Vazire

2017

Collabra: Psychology

108

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“…Our story is only one potential path because there are many ways to upgrade scientific practiceswhether collaborating only with your 'future self ' or as a team-and they depend on the shared commitment of individuals, institutions and publishers 6,16,17 . We do not review the important, ongoing work regarding data management architecture and archiving 8,18 , work flows 11,[19][20][21] , sharing and publishing data [22][23][24][25] and code [25][26][27] , or how to tackle reproducibility and openness in science [28][29][30][31][32] . Instead, we focus on our experience, because it required changing the way we had always worked, which was extraordinarily intimidating.…”

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confidence: 99%

Our path to better science in less time using open data science tools

Best²,

et al. 2017

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“…Although one would hope that academic institutions 181 would take seriously an accusation of fraud against a staff member, they can be slow to act; 182 it is, of course, important that they consider the possibility that they are dealing with an 183 unjustified attack by those with vested interests or fixed ideas. These do occur, but malign 184 intent should not be the default assumption, unless there are several 'red flags' of the kind 185 noted by Lewandowsky and Bishop (2016). Although there are some notable cases of good 186 practice (e.g.…”

Section: Examples Of Researchers Who Highlighted Errors In Their Own mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fallibility in science: Responding to errors in the work of oneself and others

Bishop

2017

Preprint

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Fallibility in science cuts both ways: it poses dilemmas for the scientist who discovers errors in their own work, and for those who discover errors in the work of others. The ethical response to finding errors in one's own work is clear: they should be claimed and corrected as rapidly as possible. Yet people are often reluctant to 'do the right thing' because of a perception this could lead to reputational damage. I argue that the best defence against such outcomes is adoption of open science practices, which help avoid errors and also leads to recognition that mistakes are part of normal science. Indeed, a reputation for scientific integrity can be enhanced by admitting to errors. The second part of the paper focuses on situations where errors are discovered in the work of others; in the case of honest errors, action must be taken to put things right, but this should be done in a collegial way that offers the researcher the opportunity to deal with the problem themselves. Difficulties arise if those who commit errors are unresponsive or reluctant to make changes, when there is disagreement about whether a dataset or analysis is problematic, or where deliberate manipulation of findings or outright fraud is suspected. I offer some guidelines about how to approach such cases. My key message is that for science to progress, we have to accept the inevitability of error. In the long run, scientists will not be judged on whether or not they make mistakes, but on how they respond when those mistakes are detected.

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Research integrity: Don't let transparency damage science

Cited by 83 publications

References 9 publications

Quality Uncertainty Erodes Trust in Science

Quality Uncertainty Erodes Trust in Science

Our path to better science in less time using open data science tools

Fallibility in science: Responding to errors in the work of oneself and others

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