Challenge for our generation: open, reproducible and reliable science
Symposium co-organized by Anna Krystalli, Isabel Winney & Malika Ihle, following the International Society of Behavioural Ecology Conference, on the 3rd of August 2016 in Exeter, U.K.
Printable Schedule 
Knowing the truth is what drives us to do science
But often, the way we do science is unreliable
We want to understand why and find solutions
Scientists and funding bodies, and sometimes the general public, have been troubled by irreproducible studies. False-positive results are flooding the literature. This symposium, targeting academics of all stages, will gather critical minds from our field to elucidate the problems and guide you through practical solutions that you can use in your own work. Workshops will include introductions to RStudio, Git, and pre-registration walk-through. This will help you to become efficient and reproducible, making it easy to share your work with collaborators, or the whole world. Reproducible practices are essential for keeping up with the amount and complexity of our data, and to demonstrate the quality of our research. One day, reproducibility and openness will not only be rewarded, but will be required!
Speakers: Caroline Thomson, Luke Holman, Martin Bulla, Megan Head, Mike Croucher, Shakti Lamba, Shinichi Nakagawa, Wolfgang Forstmeier
Workshops: Data and code management, version control and collaborative coding with GitHub, project organisation with RStudio, analysis reports with RMarkdown, pre-registration walk-through, open data for long term data sets…
Presentation of issues
9:30 Self-deception (Shakti Lamba)
How humans are self-deceiving, even in research. PLoS One paper.
9:50 Publication bias – type 1 error (Wolfgang Forstmeier)
Issues surrounding increased publication of significant results. Biological Review paper.
10:10 Frequency and consequences of blinding in the life sciences (Luke Holman)
Data are often collected without accounting for human sensory bias. PLoS Biology paper.
11:00 The P-hacking phenomenon (Megan Head)
Examining the process of intentional and unintentional quests for PLoS Biology paper.
11:20 Is your research software correct? (Mike Croucher)
Issues surrounding the use and development of research software
Presentation of practical counter-measures
11:40 Center for Open Science – framework for scientists (Shinichi Nakagawa)
Transparency and Openness Promotion guidelines, badges to acknowledge open practices, current joint editorial efforts.
12:00 Example from our field – long term dataset (Caroline Thomson)
Putting THIS long-term data set online, issues of reproducibility in long term data.
12:20 Replicating experimental work: a claim for truly open data, code and spirit (Martin Bulla)
Personal experience with replicating experimental work – a lessons to be learnt. Behavioural Ecology paper.
12:40 Data, code and workflow management in R Studio (Malika Ihle)
General walk-through and examples.
Workshops
14:00 Project organisation with RStudio and Version control with Git (Mike Croucher & Anna Krystalli)
RStudio becoming a very powerful integrated data science tool in which research projects can be organised from start to finish. We’ll walk through setting up a project and linking a project to GitHub.
16:00 Analysis reports with RMarkdown (Anna Krystalli)
Examples of how to use markdown to document, present and publish code and analyses directly through R and even build free websites hosted on github.
16:00 Pre-registration walk-through (Wolfgang Forstmeier)
Walk-through and considerations when publishing your first study with the Open Science Framework.
17:00 Collaborative coding with GitHub (Mike Croucher & Anna Krystalli)
Well documented, open and transparent code is the first step towards workflow reproducibility. It is also the first step to collaborative working and enabling others to build on your work. In this workshop we’ll cover some github basics and tips and tricks on how to make use of github features for maintaining open collaborative workflows.
17:00 Open data for long term data sets (Caroline Thomson)
Practicalities, drawbacks and hold-ups with open data for long term studies.
Resources
Preregister your study
Signatories
The Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative
Commitment to Research Transparency
TOP guidelines (Transparency and Openness Promotion for institution in Ecology and Evolution)
Get trained
Open Science Framework Webinars on open, reproducible research practices, and free statistical consultations
Software Carpentry Teaching basic lab skills for research computing
Papers published as an outcome
Ihle M, Winney IS, Krystalli A & Croucher M. 2017. Striving for transparent and credible research: practical guidelines for behavioral ecologist. Invited Idea – Behavioral Ecology.
Winney IS, Ihle M. Transparent and credible practices under the microscope: a response to comments on Ihle et al. Behavioral Ecology.
What attendees said
“ These tools for working reproducibility should be taught in undergrad ! ”
“ I always felt like anyone could come to the conclusion they like, and that nobody is really able to check the validity of the claims made. Sometimes I feel that the “science” we do is ridiculously unprofessional ”
“ I attended the post-conference symposia in Exeter and I liked it very much. It changed and will change a lot my workflow as a project leader on my current science project. [..] I just wanted to let you know how much I liked the speakers, the spirit and the outcome. ”
Malika Ihle 