Meeting 13 Sept: Transparency in Ecology and Evolution

For next meeting I would like to discuss concerns about transparency in empirical sciences in general and ecology and evolution specifically. The next paper highlights those issues and discusses some solutions.

Title: Transparency in Ecology and Evolution: Real Problems, Real Solutions

TREE Vol. 31, Issue 9, September 2016, Pages 711–719

Abstract: To make progress scientists need to know what other researchers have found and how they found it. However, transparency is often insufficient across much of ecology and evolution. Researchers often fail to report results and methods in detail sufficient to permit interpretation and meta-analysis, and many results go entirely unreported. Further, these unreported results are often a biased subset. Thus the conclusions we can draw from the published literature are themselves often biased and sometimes might be entirely incorrect. Fortunately there is a movement across empirical disciplines, and now within ecology and evolution, to shape editorial policies to better promote transparency. This can be done by either requiring more disclosure by scientists or by developing incentives to encourage disclosure.

Tuesday 13 September at 10.00, Argumentet