Dec 2018 - Article in Nature Published

Roger Kneebone, Claudia Schlegel and Alan C. Spivey, 'Science in hand: how art and craft can boost reproducibility', Nature, 2018, 564, 188-189 DOI: 10.1038/d41586-018-07676-4

A 2016 Nature feature on the ‘reproducibility crisis’ showed that 70% of 1500 scientists had tried and failed to reproduce another group’s experiments, while more than half were unable to reproduce their own work. Among many possible reasons, such as the cherry-picking of data and selective reporting of results, is the practical doing of experiments. Even shaking rather than stirring a sample can lead to different outcomes. Yet such minutiae are often overlooked. In this essay we suggest that systematic exploration with experts outside science can bring unexpected insights and address some of these challenges.