My department’s clinical area invited me to present in PSY 543, Clinical Research Methods on open science. I gratefully accepted. We have a strong clinical program, and I enjoy engaging with the students. Today was no exception.
Today was exceptional, however, in that all seven students said “Yes, a significant crisis” when asked if there is a reproducibility crisis in science, a question asked by a 2016 Nature survey (Baker 2016) that I like to use as a starting point for a conversation on these topics. Whether that’s good or bad depends on your point of view, I suppose. Of course, I agree with the endorsement, and think that recognizing a problem is the first essential step to devising solutions.
Less notable, but no less fun was a successful experiment with a new Reveal.js trick (multiplex) that lets the audience watch the slides advance as I advance them.
The talk was also a good excuse to review some of the recent results from the Pew Research Center surveys on trust in science and support for public funding of research (Kennedy 2023). It’s not clear that these patterns reflect recent issues of reproducibility, but that’s all the more reason researchers must get out in front of these issues.