reproducibility

Several labs have reported the formation of bacterial nanotubes under different, often contrasting conditions. What are these structures and why are they so hard to reproduce?

Differences in how researchers prepare and image samples can lead to discrepancies in their results.

Malcolm Macleod, who helped develop these best practices, tells The Scientist how the new guidelines for manuscript publishing seek to support a push for transparent and thorough sharing of methods and data.

At a time of fast-paced science and rampant misinformation, can we trust the non–peer-reviewed literature?

The journal Ethology is the first to adopt the guidelines, aimed at clarifying experimental design and the potential biases within.

When 70 independent teams were tasked with analyzing identical brain images, no two teams chose the same approach and their conclusions were highly variable.

Last month, 10 UK universities became part of the UK Reproducibility Network, joining researchers, funders, journal publishers, and regulatory agencies.

My lab has developed a protocol to easily assess the specificity of antibodies—and hopefully stem some of the reproducibility crisis.

The original experiment found brain activity as measured by fMRI was tied to particular genetic variants.

The new work calls into question the idea that neurons can be genetically engineered to fire in response to magnetic fields, a setback for the budding technique.

Its articles will include negative results, reproducibility studies, and peer reviewers’ names.

Many preclinical studies carried out in vivo are poorly designed and generate irreproducible data, but efforts to address the problem are on the rise.

Five independent groups got different results in a drug-response experiment, despite sharing protocols, reagents, and cell lines. The researchers identify technical variables that could be to blame.

Take a break from the bench to puzzle and peruse.

Scientists find varied microbiota among the same strain of mice from four vendors—and that variability affects their susceptibility to infection.

This could account for some reproducibility problems in cell line research, according to the authors of a comprehensive analysis of HeLa variants.