Reproducibility Immersive Course

Abstract

Various fields in the natural and social sciences face a ‘crisis of confidence’. Broadly, this crisis amounts to a pervasiveness of non-reproducible results in the published literature. For example, in the field of biomedicine, Amgen published findings that out of 53 landmark published results of pre-clinical studies, only 11% could be replicated successfully. This crisis is not confined to biomedicine. Areas that have recently received attention for non-reproducibility include biomedicine, economics, political science, psychology, as well as philosophy. Some scholars anticipate the expansion of this crisis to other disciplines.This course explores the state of reproducibility. After giving a brief historical perspective, case studies from different disciplines (biomedicine, psychology, and philosophy) are examined to understand the issues concretely. Subsequently, problems that lead to non-reproducibility are discussed as well as possible solutions and paths forward.