Reproducibility Rounds

Reproducibility Rounds are a new international monthly webinar designed to foster open dialogue and exchange of experiences between institutions, researchers, and other stakeholders on the critical topics of research rigor and reproducibility.

Rounds are organized by the Stanford School of Medicine’s Program on Research Rigor & Reproducibility (SPORR), in collaboration with Columbia, Duke, Harvard, and Indiana, and occur every third Tuesday of the month.

If you have suggestions for a topic that should be covered in the Rounds, or would like to present, please contact us.

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Next Rounds - 20 May - 9 AM PT time

Topic: Estimating Replicability of Lab Biology Research at a National Level: Results and Lessons from the Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative

Speaker: Prof. Olavo Amaral, MD, PhD

Abstract: In this talk, we will present the results of a large multicenter replication of biomedical lab research from Brazil using three common experimental methods: the MTT assay, the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and the elevated plus maze (EPM) experiments in mice. A total of 56 laboratories performed 143 replications of 56 experiments, of which 97 replications of 47 experiments were judged valid by an independent committee. Replication rates for these experiments varied between 15% and 45% according to five predefined criteria. In median terms, relative effect sizes (expressed as ratios of means) were 60% larger in original experiments than in replications, while coefficients of variation were 60% smaller. Beyond the results, we will discuss what we have learned about factors that limit replicability in lab biology, as well as about the challenges of performing large-scale confirmatory research projects in academia.