Addressing the Reproducibility Crisis: Improving Research Design, Data Analysis and Reporting

1 Day Event at the University of Bath discussing the best practices as a researcher as more findings fail to replicate.

There has been an intense debate regarding the robustness of many published findings in psychological science, neuroscience and social science over recent years, with many classic findings failing to replicate, and a growing realisation that many published findings may be unreliable. Small sample sizes and questionable research practices such as p-hacking, hypothesising after the results are known, and selectively publishing positive results have all been identified as contributing factors.

In response, there has been a move towards rigorous and transparent scientific practices, such as pre-registering study protocols and making materials and data available open-access, designing studies with sufficient statistical power, and team science approaches to pooling data, resources and expertise.

This workshop will provide a practical introduction to open science targeted at PhD students. This will include pre-registration of studies and the registered report format adopted by many leading journals, open data and resources, and reproducible workflows all of which can be facilitated via open access resources such as the Open Science Framework. It will also include practical exercises, question and answer sessions and peer learning where current PhD students will talk about their experiences with reproducibility and highlight examples of good practice in their labs.