LEADER


Reproducibility S


cience has been described as the systematic and logical process applied to the discovery of how things work and affect us all. Its results contribute to an ever-growing body


of knowledge, information and data that can be used in the development of materials, therapies, etc that can bring benefit to society. It moves forward through the development of theories and the subsequent testing of a theory through experimentation. Being able to confirm a scientific theory by


C&I is owned by the SCI 14-15 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PS


Tel: +44 (0) 20 7598 1500 Email: secretariat@soci.org


Chemistry & Industry is published 11 times a year by John Wiley & Sons Limited (on behalf of SCI), The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom


www.wiley.com INTERNATIONAL


Dr John Emsley Dr Morris Berrie


ADVISORY BOARD Dr Pariti Siva Rama Kumar


repeating experimentation has a long history of being a basic tenet of scientific discovery. There have, however, been a number of concerns expressed over the years about its validity. According to researchers at the University


of Idaho, reported in the journal PLOS ONE, reproducible scientific results are not always true and true scientific results are not always reproducible (journals.plos.org/plosone/ article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216125). The researchers investigated the relationship


DyStar, India


University of Cambridge, UK TechInvestor, UK


Eric Johnson Atlantic Consulting, Switzerland Tarit Mukhopadyhay


University College London, UK


Prof David Walton University of Coventry, UK Prof Martyn Poliakoff


Prof Erick Vandamme Catherine Kennan


ADVERTISING Tracie Rose-Neale


University of Nottingham, UK


University of Ghent, Belgium


Trinseo +44 (0)1243 770272 trroseneal@wiley.com


SUBSCRIPTIONS For ordering information please go to: wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/support or email: cs-journals@wiley.com


Americas


Tel +1 781 388 8598 or +1 800 835 6770


(toll free in the USA & Canada)


Europe, Middle East and Africa Tel +44 (0)1865 778315


Asia Pacific Tel +65 6511 8000


Japan (Japanese speaking support) Tel +65 6511 8010


Email: cs-japan@wiley.com


Further Japanese customer support is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ support.


The US annual subscription price is US$1019. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by Agent named Air Business, C/O AirCityPost LLC, 153- 63 Rockaway Blvd, Jamaica, New York NY11434. Periodicals postage paid at Jamaica NY 11431.


US Postmaster: Send address changes to Chemistry & Industry, C/O Air Business, C/O AirCityPost LLC, 153-63 Rockaway Blvd, Jamaica, New York NY11434. Subscription records are maintained at John Wiley & Sons, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom. Air Business Ltd is acting as Wiley’s mailing agent.


between reproducibility and the discovery of scientific truths by building a mathematical model that represents a scientific community working towards finding a scientific truth. Reproducibility, the independent confirmation of scientific results, is generally considered to add credibility to a researcher’s conclusion. But today there is what many have called a replication crisis, with researchers finding that the results of many well-known scientific experiments cannot be reproduced.


This crisis is not a new phenomenon. Back in 2006, a report by UNICEF highlighted that researchers have seen reproducibility become ‘a weapon in many of the attacks against science. Reproducibility is seen as part of science when it is defined in part as being ‘testable against the empirical world’, according to the US legal system. Consistently holding up to repeated testing is generally seen as a necessary component of science.


In a 2016 survey by the science publication


Nature, more than half of scientists called the problem of reproducibility a ‘significant crisis’ (nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid- on-reproducibility-1.19970). At that time it was suggested that around half of preclinical research appeared to be unreproducible. This concern led to an increase in published studies on reproducibility, up from 100/year in 1990 to over 300 in 2016. Most recently it has resulted in the study at the University of Idaho. As the lead author of the Idaho study, Berna Devezer, an associate professor of marketing in the


Neil Eisberg | Editor


university’s College of Business and Economics, pointed out: ‘Over the last decade, people have focused on trying to find remedies for the “replication crisis”. But proposals for remedies are being accepted and implemented too fast without solid justifications to support them. ‘We need a better theoretical understanding


of how science operates before we can provide reliable remedies for the right problems. Our model is a framework for studying science.’ But one of the key problems is there are


many interpretations of what reproducibility actually means. Does it mean the methods of the experiment can be reproduced? Or does it mean that two different groups of researchers analysing the same data would come to the same conclusion? Also is there a difference between reproducibility and replicability? Reproducibility depends upon the degree of


agreement between the results of experiments conducted by different individuals, at different locations, using different equipment. Effectively, this shows whether the study or experiment can be reproduced in its entirety. For repeatability or replicability, it is generally


considered to involve the same location, the same measurement procedure, the same person, the same measuring instrument, used under the same conditions, with repetition over a short period of time.


The US National Science Foundation,


for example, has been reported as defining replicability or repeatability as ‘the ability of a researcher to duplicate the results of a prior study if the same procedures are followed but new data are collected’. It is clear that in both cases there is an opportu-


nity for different results to be recorded. This may be due to environmental conditions, variations in the materials used, and a host of other variables. One outcome of the generation of different results can be a drive to conduct further investigations For this reason, scientific findings often report


reproducibility and repeatability as standard deviations. This can, of course, assist in the further development of the existing experiments, with a resulting improvement in the reproducibility and repeatability. The testing and evaluation of scientific discoveries forms the bedrock for the commercialisation of these discoveries that have brought astounding developments for society. But these developments rely on sound science that can be demonstrated reproducibly.


© Society of Chemical Industry 2019 ISSN [print] 0009-3068. ISSN [online] 2047-6329 Views expressed in this issue do not necessarily reflect those of SCI or C&I


4 06 | 2019


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52