Academic Life and Culture

Experimenter as automaton; experimenter as human: Exploring the position of the researcher in scientific research

The crisis of confidence in the social sciences has many corollaries which impact our research practices. One of these is a push towards maximal and mechanical objectivity in quantitative research. This stance is reinforced by major journals and …

Feasibility of Emulating Clinical Trials Supporting US FDA Supplemental Indication Approvals of Drugs and Biologics

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has developed a framework to use data gathered outside of clinical trials (eg, electronic health record [EHR] and insurance claims data) for evaluations of medical product safety and effectiveness. These …

Fifty years of research on questionable research practises in science: Quantitative analysis of co-citation patterns

Questionable research practises (QRPs) have been the focus of the scientific community amid greater scrutiny and evidence highlighting issues with replicability across many fields of science. To capture the most impactful publications and the main …

From policy to practice: Lessons learned from an open science funding initiative

In the past few years, there has been a notable shift in the open science landscape as more countries and international agencies release recommendations and implementation guidelines for open scholarship. In August 2022, the US White House Office of …

From private incentives to public health need: rethinking research and development for pandemic preparedness

Pandemic preparedness and response have relied primarily on market dynamics to drive development and availability of new health products. Building on calls for transformation, we propose a new value proposition that instead prioritises equity from …

Harvard Professor’s Papers Contain Copied Images, Says Science Sleuth

A Harvard Medical School scientist who studies deadly brain tumors is facing accusations that more than two dozen papers he co-authored contain scientific images that appear doctored or copied.

Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of Six Papers by Top Researchers

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, is seeking to retract six studies and correct 31 other papers as part of a probe involving four of its senior cancer researchers and administrators.

How openness facilitates collaboration

Dr Jemeen Sreedharan talks about his personal experiences of openness (and the opposite!) and how it has led to his research flourishing. This is a series of anecdotes and associated learning experiences he has had over the years.

How racist policing took over American cities, explained by a historian

“The problem is the way policing was built,” historian Khalil Muhammad says.

IIT vs. GNWT and the meaning of evidence in consciousness science

This post follows one I wrote earlier in the summer, after ASSC. Since then I have been trying (in a first-person therapy sort of way) to figure out what made me so worried after the IIT vs. GNWT showdown, and the media coverage that followed it. In …