Welcome to the BITSS Blog

The BITSS blog is an interdisciplinary venue for discussing issues surrounding meta-science including transparency, reproducibility, methodology, ethics, and access. Posts are authored by BITSS staff, as well as affiliated partners and those broadly interested in open science and meta-science.

If you are interested in submitting to the BITSS Blog, please see Guidance for Authors.

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  • Scientific consensus has gotten a bad reputation—and it doesn’t deserve it

    In a recent post, Senior science editor at Ars Technica, John Timmer defends the importance of consensus. Opening with the following quote from author Michael Crichton: Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to…

  • The 10 Things Every Grad Student Should Do

    In a recent post on the Data Pub blog, Carly Strasser provides a useful transparency guide for newcomers to the world of empirical research. Below is an adapted version of that post.  1. Learn to code in some language. Any language. Strasser begins her list urging students to learn a programming language. As the limitations of statistical packages including STATA,…

  • Teaching Integrity in Empirical Research

    Richard Ball (Economics Professor at Haverford College and presenter at the 2014 BITSS Summer Institute) and Norm Medeiros (Associate Librarian at Haverford College) in a recent interview appearing on  the Library of Congress based blog The Signal, discussed Project TIER (Teaching Integrity in Empirical Research) and their experience educating students how to document their empirical…

  • Reproducible Research: True or False?

    Keynote speaker at the upcoming BITSS annual meeting John Ioannidis (Professor of Health Research and Policy at Stanford School of Medicine, and Co-Director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center) speaks at Google about its efforts to improve research designs standards and reproducibility in science. Ioannidis is the author of the 2005 highly influential paper Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, the most downloaded…

  • Can Greater Transparency Lead to Better Social Science?

    In a recent article on the Monkey Cage, professors Mike Findley, Nathan Jensen, Edmund Malesky and Tom Pepinsky  discuss publication bias, the “file drawer problem” and how a special issue of the journal Comparative Political Studies will help address these problems.  Similar to a recent article by Brendan Nyhan, reposted on the BITSS blog, the university professors writing the article assert:…

  • BITSS is on Twitter!

    BITSS has expanded its online media presence with a new Twitter account.  Keep up to date with us and the world of research transparency by following @ucbitss.

  • Reminder: Call for Papers Deadline is October 10th

    Papers or long abstract for the Call for Papers on Research Transparency must be submitted by Friday, October 10th (11:59pm PST) through CEGA’s Submission Platform. Topics for papers include, but are not limited to: pre-registration and the use of pre-analysis plans; disclosure and transparent reporting; replicability and reproducibility; data sharing; and methods for detecting and reducing publication bias or…

  • MCC’s First Open Data Challenge

    The U.S. Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) wants to hear your new and innovative ideas on how to maximize the use of data that MCC finances for its independent evaluations. Keynote speakers at this year’s BITSS Research Transparency Forum, Jennifer Sturdy and Jack Molyneaux at MCC’s Department of Policy and Evaluation, and Kathy Farley and Kristin Penn…

  • MCC's First Open Data Challenge

    The U.S. Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) wants to hear your new and innovative ideas on how to maximize the use of data that MCC finances for its independent evaluations. Keynote speakers at this year’s BITSS Research Transparency Forum, Jennifer Sturdy and Jack Molyneaux at MCC’s Department of Policy and Evaluation, and Kathy Farley and Kristin Penn…

  • To Get More Out of Science, Show the Rejected Research

    In a recent opinion piece on the New York Times news portal the Upshot, Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College, comments on a host of transparency related issues. Closely echoing the mission of BITSS, Nyhan identifies the potential of research transparency to improve the rigor and ultimately the benefits of federally funded…

  • Africa’s Data Revolution – Amanda Glassman

    Interview originally posted on the Global Poverty Wonkcast:   Is the revolution upon us? When it comes to data, the development world seems to be saying yes, Yes, YES! To look beyond the hype, I invited Amanda Glassman, a CGD senior fellow and director of our global health policy program, to join me on the show…

  • Africa's Data Revolution – Amanda Glassman

    Interview originally posted on the Global Poverty Wonkcast:   Is the revolution upon us? When it comes to data, the development world seems to be saying yes, Yes, YES! To look beyond the hype, I invited Amanda Glassman, a CGD senior fellow and director of our global health policy program, to join me on the show…

  • Can Post-Publication Peer-Review Increase Research Transparency?

    Guest Post by Liz Allen (ScienceOpen) For the 3rd annual conference of The Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS), ScienceOpen, the new Open Access (OA) research + publishing network, would like prospective and registered attendees to consider the role that Post-Publication Peer Review (PPPP) can play in increasing the transparency of research. When…

  • COS Now Offering Free Consulting Services

    A close partner of BITSS, the Center for Open Science (COS) has launched a free consulting service to anyone seeking help with “statistical and methodological questions related to reproducible practices, research design, data analysis, and data management.” The Center is dedicated to increasing the “openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research” and is looking to…

  • Announcing The 2014 Research Transparency Forum

    BITSS is pleased to announce its 3rd annual meeting (December 11-12 – Berkeley, CA). This year’s research transparency meeting will be the first to be open to the public and is anticipated to be the largest BITSS event to date. The event will act to update the academic community of the growing movement for greater openness in research…

  • White House Calls for Comments on Reproducible Research

    The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has released a request for information on improving the reproducibility of federally funded scientific research. Given recent evidence of the irreproducibility of a surprising number of published scientific findings, how can the Federal Government leverage its role as a significant funder of scientific research to most effectively…

  • Political Scientists Launch New Replication Initiative

    Following a groundswell of interest for replications in the political sciences, first noticed from survey results posted on the Monkey Cage Blog, Political Scientists Seth Werfel (Stanford University) and Nicole Janz (Cambridge University), and research consultant Stephanie Wykstra launched the Political Science Replication Initiative, a new repository for uploading study replications. Increasingly, methodological political scientists have recognized the need to…

  • New Study Sheds Light on File Drawer Problem

    A new study recently published in Science provides striking insights into publication bias in the social sciences: Stanford political economist Neil Malhotra and two of his graduate students examined every study since 2002 that was funded by a competitive grants program called TESS (Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences). TESS allows scientists to order up…

  • eLife, the Center for Open Science, and Science Exchange partner to assess the reproducibility of cancer biology research

    eLife will be the publisher for the results of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, an effort led by the Center for Open Science and Science Exchange. First announced in October 2013, with $1.3 million in funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology aims to replicate key experimental findings in…

  • Call for Pre-analysis Plans of Observational Studies

    Observational Studies is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes papers on all aspects of observational studies. Researchers from all fields that make use of observational studies are encouraged to submit papers. Observational Studies encourages submission of study protocols (pre-analysis plans) for observational studies. Before examining the outcomes that will form the basis for an observational study’s…

  • Job Opportunity in Data Curation/Publication

    Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) seeks a Research Analyst to join the Data Analysis/Data Publication team. This team is leading an innovative and exciting new part of IPA’s effort to promote high quality research: releasing research data from social science experiments publicly, for re-use and replication. The position also involves helping to develop a data repository for…

  • Call for Papers on Research Transparency

    BITSS will be holding its 3rd annual conference at UC Berkeley on December 11-12, 2014. The goal of the meeting is to bring together leaders from academia, scholarly publishing, and policy to strengthen the standards of openness and integrity across social science disciplines. This Call for Papers focuses on work that elaborates new tools and strategies to increase the transparency and reproducibility of research. A committee of reviewers will select…

  • “Research misconduct accounts for a small percentage of total funding”: Study

  • "Research misconduct accounts for a small percentage of total funding": Study

  • Data Access and Research Transparency Panel @ APSA 2014

    Join the BITSS co-sponsored panel Implementing Data Access and Research Transparency: Multiple Challenges, Multiple Perspectives at the upcoming meeting of the American Political Science Association (August 27-31, 2014 — Washington, DC). Chairs: Colin Elman, Syracuse University Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • Data Science Meets Social Science (Video)

    The video from a recent BITSS roundtable entitled “Data Science Meets Social Science” is now available online. Organized in partnership with the UC Berkeley D-Lab, the event brought together leading social scientists and Silicon Valley professionals to discuss pathways of collaboration between the two different fields, and their increasing impact on society in the age of open…

  • Your Question for the Day — What Is “Peer Review”?

  • Your Question for the Day — What Is "Peer Review"?

  • Significance Chasing in Research Practice

    A new paper by Jennifer Ware and Marcus Munafò (University of Bristol, UK) Background and Aims The low reproducibility of findings within the scientific literature is a growing concern. This may be due to many findings being false positives which, in turn, can misdirect research effort and waste money. Methods We review factors that may contribute to…

  • Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good

    Videos and presentations from the book launch of “Privacy, Big Data and the Public Good” (Lane, J., Stodden, V., Bender, S. & Nissenbaum, H. (Eds)) are now available online. Hosted by the NYU Center for Urban Science on July 16, the event included several panels with the book’s editors and a number of the authors. Overview of the book: Massive amounts of new data about people, their movements, and…

  • Research Transparency & Open Knowledge: Lessons from #OKFest14

    By Guillaume Kroll (CEGA) Over a thousand scientists, activists, and civil society representatives from over 60 countries gathered in Berlin last week for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival (OKFest14). The Festival is the flagship event of the Open Knowledge Foundation, an international nonprofit promoting open tools, data, and information for the positive transformation of society. It’s a well-oiled event, full of…

  • Research Transparency & Open Knowledge: Lessons from #OKFest14

    By Guillaume Kroll (CEGA) Over a thousand scientists, activists, and civil society representatives from over 60 countries gathered in Berlin last week for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival (OKFest14). The Festival is the flagship event of the Open Knowledge Foundation, an international nonprofit promoting open tools, data, and information for the positive transformation of society. It’s a well-oiled event, full of…

  • Science Establishes New Statistics Review Board

    The journal Science is adding an additional step of statistical checks to its peer-review process in an effort to strengthen confidence in published study findings. From the July 4th edition of Science: […] Science has established, effective 1 July 2014, a Statistical Board of Reviewing Editors (SBoRE), consisting of experts in various aspects of statistics and data analysis, to provide better…

  • How to Manipulate Peer Review and Get Your Paper Published

    Another scandal of peer review abuse should urge academic journals to reconsider their publication requirements. This one comes from the Journal of Vibration and Control (JVC), an highly technical outlet in the field of acoustics, which just retracted 60 papers at once. The mass retraction followed the revelation of a “peer review ring” in which one or…

  • Peer Review of Social Science Research in Global Health

    A new working paper by Victoria Fan, Rachel Silverman, David Roodman, and William Savedoff at the Center for Global Development. Abstract In recent years, the interdisciplinary nature of global health has blurred the lines between medicine and social science. As medical journals publish non-experimental research articles on social policies or macro-level interventions, controversies have arisen when…

  • Replication in Economics Database

    For scientific progress, it is pivotal to review research findings by independently replicating results, thus making the findings more reliable. However, in econometric research, it is not yet common practice to publish replication findings. Replication Wiki This wiki, developed by researchers at the University of Göttingen (Germany), compiles replications of empirical studies in economics. It is a…

  • 10 Things You Need to Know About…

    Check out this new EGAP series: 10 Things You Need to Know About Causal Effects 10 Things You Need to Know About Randomization 10 Things You Need to Know About Statistical Power 10 Strategies to Figure Out if X Caused Y

  • Research Transparency, Data Access, and Data Citation: A Call to Action for Scholarly Publications

    This collaborative statement calls upon the scholarly publishing community to take leadership in advancing knowledge through research transparency, data access, and data citation. Please consider adding your name to the endorsements page and encourage others to do the same. This Call to Action was produced at the “Data Citation and Research Transparency Standards for the Social Sciences” meeting convened by…

  • Summer Institute Material Now Available

    All the material from our summer institute in transparency practices for empirical research is now accessible on our training page. This weeklong workshop provides an overview of the latest trends in the shift towards increased transparency, combining presentations on conceptual issues in current research practices with hands-on training on emerging tools and approaches to further openness…

  • Future Steps for Research in Dishonesty

    The Economic Science Association, an experimental economics professional organization, recently organized a workshop about dishonesty research at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The panel was composed of Mike Norton (Harvard Business School), Johannes Abeler (Oxford University), Marco Piovesan (University of Copenhagen), and Roberto Weber (University of Zurich). The discussion focused on future directions for research in this field. The…

  • The Controversy of Preregistration in Social Research

    Guest post by Jamie Monogan (University of Georgia) A conversation is emerging in the social sciences over the merits of study registration and whether it should be the next step we take in raising research transparency. The notion of study registration is that, prior to observing outcome data, a researcher can publicly release a data…

  • Call for Papers: Special Issue of Comparative Political Studies on Research Transparency

    From Michael Findley (University of Texas), Nathan Jensen (Washington University), Edmund Malesky (Duke), and Thomas Pepinsky (Cornell) We invite proposals for a special issue of Comparative Political Studies (CPS) on research transparency in the social sciences. Proposals for original research papers using quantitative or qualitative approaches, and collecting quantitative or qualitative data are all encouraged.…

  • Scientific Misconduct in the Middle East

    On plagiarism and fraud in the Middle Eastern research community (by Ranya Stamboliyska): Gallons of digital ink have been spilt discussing depressing laundry lists of misconduct cases in the west (and more recently, in China). There is, however, very little on unethical behaviour in the Arab world, despite the wide number of Mid-Eastern students from local and…

  • Tonight! Data Science Meets Social Science

    Tonight in Berkeley! June 5, 2014 6:00pm — 7:30pm. David Brower Center (Kinzie Room), 2150 Allston Way. All across the social sciences we can see a convergence around the ideals of openness and reproducibility. Over the past years, the injection of ways of thinking and working from scientific computing into social science research has helped develop an infrastructure…

  • BITSS Summer Institute – Summary of the First Day

    BITSS is currently holding its first summer institute in transparency practices for empirical research. The meeting is taking place in Berkeley, CA with 30+ graduate students and junior faculty in the attendance. Ted Miguel (Economics, UC Berkeley), one of the founding members of BITSS, started with an overview of conceptual issues in current research practices.…

  • What can be done to prevent the proliferation of errors in academic publications?

    Every now and again a paper is published on the number of errors made in academic articles. These papers document the frequency of conceptual errors, factual errors, errors in abstracts, errors in quotations, and errors in reference lists. James Hartley reports that the data are alarming, but suggests a possible way of reducing them. Perhaps…

  • Replicate it! A Proposal to Foster Knowledge Accumulation

    Thad Dunning and Susan D. Hyde in the Washington Post: Like many social scientists, we take it almost as an article of faith that scientific methods will advance our knowledge about how the world works. The growing use by social scientists of strong research designs — for example, randomized controlled experiments or natural experiments —…

  • Is public criticism of science bullying?

  • The Ethics of Using and Sharing Data for Development Programming (5/22 @ NYC)

    The Responsible Data Forum is a new effort to map the ethical, legal, privacy and security challenges surrounding the increased use and sharing of data in development programming. The Forum aims to explore the ways in which these challenges are experienced in project design and implementation, as well as when project data is shared or published…

  • Flawed Research On Your Plate

    You might want to reconsider paying extra dollar for these fish oil supplements. A new study said most of the research literature on the cardiovascular benefits of omega-3 fatty acids is flawed. In the early 1970s, two Danish researchers started to investigate the diet of Greenland’s Inuit populations, which were believed to live longer than their Caucasian counterparts. The study concluded that the…