Enhancing Reproducibility in NIH-supported Research through Rigor and Transparency

Dr. Larry Tabak is the Principal Deputy Director of NIH.
Nothing could be more important to our enterprise than research rigor, assuring that the results of our work are reproducible. Our conversation with you on this topic began early last year with a commentary in Nature by Francis Collins and today’s guest blogger, Larry Tabak, on the importance of reproducibility and how NIH plans to enhance it. As described in a follow-up Rock Talk post, the topic of reproducibility is not new. Evidence has shown that too many biomedical-research publications are irreproducible. Thus this topic demanded our community’s immediate attention and we have had continued dialog with and participation by you over the course of the last 18 months to describe the issue, request information, launch pilots, and craft a way forward to enhance reproducibility.
Since that January 2014 Nature commentary, NIH has begun to address reproducibility from a number of different angles. In 2014, NIH worked alongside journal editors to develop a set of common principles to guide how research results are reported. In 2015, NIH published a series of videos as a resource intended to stimulate conversation in courses on experimental design. In addition to these efforts, NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health has led the discussion of the consideration of sex as an important biological variable that should be considered in designing experiments and reporting results. They have posted a variety of reso...

Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - June 9, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Sally Rockey and Larry Tabak Tags: Rock Talk Uncategorized applications Grant writing Grants policy human subjects Source Type: funding