Expert on Research Replicability and Reproducibility to Present to University Community

Center for Open Science

Brian Nosek, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Open Science

Nationally renowned psychology professor Brian Nosek will deliver a virtual presentation to the campus community on strategies to encourage the replication and reproducibility of research. The event will take place from 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 7, via WebEx.

Nosek is co-founder and executive director of the Center for Open Science, which operates the Open Science Framework, a free and open platform for research support and collaboration. The Center for Open Science enables open and reproducible research practices worldwide.

Nosek is also a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2002. In 2015, he was named one of Nature's 10 and in the Chronicle for Higher Education Influence list.

Nosek led the Reproducibility Project, the first systematic attempt to reproduce results from a large set of published findings from psychology studies. Over three years, he led a team of 270 researchers in repeating 100 published psychological experiments to see if the results could be reproduced. The main finding — that 36 percent of results that were statistically significant in the original experiments also were significant in the replication attempt — has attracted scholarly and media attention, spurring actions to create new organizations and procedures to improve the reproducibility of psychological research.

Nosek's presentation will focus on the center's vision to advance replicability and reproducibility in scientific research as well as practical strategies for a university to build a culture around the values of replicability and reproducibility and the institutional infrastructure to support such efforts.

Daniel Sui, vice chancellor for Research and Innovation, has selected a university committee to examine issues and challenges of replicability and reproducibility on campus and recommend steps the university might take to strengthen these practices and capacity. Nosek's presentation is part of that committee's efforts.

To connect to the presentation, use the WebEx link http://bit.ly/2lCV5tX and enter the passcode "Research".