Saving Science Open Up or Perish

Dr. Marcus D. Hanwell

TEDxAlbany November 14, 2013

“Standing on the Shoulders of

Giants”

Nullius in verba Motto of the Royal Society, founded in 1660

“Take nobody’s word for it”

Trust, but verify

Trust, but verify

Trust, but verify

Trust, but verify

“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com

Reproducibility

CC-BY-SA 3.0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kempelen_chess1.jpg

Showing What’s Inside the Box! •  Need everything to reproduce results

o  Raw data collected §  How it was collected, conditions, versions

o  Steps to run calculations/analysis §  Often source code

o  Analyzed results

SHOW YOUR WORK!

“Publishing Research Without Data is Simply

Advertising, Not Science”

Graham Steel, http://blog.okfn.org/2013/09/03/publishing-research-without-data-is-simply-advertising-not-science/

Reproducibility!

“Is the evidence for austerity based on an Excel spreadsheet error?”

Washington Post, April 2013 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/16/is-the-best-evidence-for-austerity-based-on-an-excel-spreadsheet-error/

What is Open??? •  What does open mean, how open is open?

o  Everyone has the same access o  No commercial, no derivatives is NOT OPEN

•  Certain basic rights are granted to ALL o  Share o  Modify o  Use

Only 6 out of 53 “landmark” cancer studies could be

reproduced

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html

Reproducibility Initiative Receives $1.3M Grant to

Validate 50 Landmark Cancer Studies

http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2013/10/reproducibility-initiative-receives-1-3m-grant-to-validate-50-landmark-cancer-studies/

An Analogy: Making Beer •  I make great home brew!

o  Using 5 gallon bioreactors to make “sweet nectar”

•  I discovered a technique to make it better! o  I sing to my beer each evening as it ferments! o  My assertion is:

§  It energizes the yeast, and makes sweeter beer... o  I have graphs showing 9/10 people prefer it o  Even did chemical analysis showing less esters!

CC-BY-SA, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brewing-textless.png

Do I Really Need to Share More? •  The beer I sang to was next to my stool

o  It was in a colder part of my basement §  I didn’t want to sit for hours in the hot part!

o  Yeast produce more esters when they are too hot §  They needed to be in a control group §  It didn’t matter if it got a little hotter over there

•  Do I want to sell beer, or do science? REPRODUCIBILITY!

CC-BY-SA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PiratesVsTemp%28en%29.svg

Correlation does not equal causation

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Data

Equations

Source Code

Always Pushing the Boundaries •  Science is about learning new things •  Understanding the universe •  Communicating that understanding •  Adding to the sum of human knowledge •  It is not about

o  “selling ideas” or “promoting your work”

Show your work all

Let’s make science open again!