Principles of Open Science (First-Year Biology Implementation)
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Open Science 101: Principles of Open Science (First-Year Biology Implementation) By Sharon Hanna, Mathew Vis-Dunbar, and Jason Pither University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus Welcome! If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. -Isaac Newton It’s hard to stand on the shoulders of giants if the giants are hiding under the bed. -Bonnie Swoger (Associate Director of RIT Libraries) This online course will take you on a tour of the world of Open Science, the new Scientific Revolution. After completing this 5-unit module, you should be able to: ● Describe why many people think that the Open Science (OS) movement is necessary; ● Define “Open Science”; ● Describe the ideals underlying the OS movement; ● Articulate the guiding principles of Open Science; and ● List the scientific, economic, and societal advantages resulting from the implementation of Open Science culture and practice. August 13, 2020. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 1 Pre-Module Assessment Quiz Instructions This question is to gauge your familiarity with Open Science. We suggest a 2-4 sentence answer (short paragraph). Please don’t Google to find answers, as we would like to get an accurate idea of how much you know coming into the course. Question (1 pt) You have spent some time in lab discussing what science is, but have you also heard of “Open Science”? [Conditional on affirmative response:] What do you think this means? Question (1 pt) Open Science is very much about transparency in the research process and sharing of scientific inputs and outputs (how research is done and what is discovered). Using examples of the Alvarez story, describe two ways in which Alvarez showed transparency and sharing of science that would benefit the community as a whole. Question (1 pt) What is citizen science, and how does it benefit society? Can you give an example from Alvarez’s story? 2 Unit 1: Burden of Proof Unit 1 Objectives This unit provides a brief look into the nature and purpose of scientific research and the background of the unfolding Open Science movement. After completing it, you should be able to articulate ● why public trust in science has declined; and ● why a “Second Scientific Revolution” is necessary. Shall we begin? The Burden of Proof Introduction Science is a beautiful thing. It is a landscape of exploration and one that at its root is tasked with finding evidence, and establishing cause and effect. At a fundamental level, this implies that science should be able to answer questions like If I exercise daily, how is this likely to affect my cardiovascular (heart) health? Or, if we build a road here, how will the local population of bighorn sheep be affected? As you'll discover throughout your degree, scientists tackle such questions through a combination of exploratory and confirmatory research. At the exploratory stage, ideas are generated and associations are discovered. For instance, we have long known about the positive association between daily exercise and physical health. But establishing that daily exercise causes healthy outcomes is a different challenge. Exploratory research gives rise to hypotheses that can then be tested through confirmatory research, which requires well-designed experiments. For example, an interdisciplinary team of UBC health researchers ran experiments on human subjects called clinical trials on older adults who attended a fall prevention clinic after a fall. The study found that the rate of subsequent falls was substantially reduced among those who participated in a home-based strength and balance retraining exercise program compared to those receiving typical geriatrician care. This confirms a causal basis to the association between participation in this type of home-based exercise program and a lower risk of re-injury through falling. Causal Links 3 Suggesting a causal link brings with it the need to show your proof. This burden of scientific proof requires both creativity and rigour; studies must be well designed and well executed. It also requires that studies be independently replicated to show that, if repeated, they will result in the same conclusions, reinforcing the validity of their findings. Ask yourself this question: Would you try a new medication that was verified by a single research lab to have no side-effects? Or would you prefer a medication that was verified by five independent research labs? Science and Social Trust Introduction Science does not exist independent of the rest of society. The outputs of science — the discoveries from research — are used in all facets of life. What is a healthy lunch option? Is lead-based paint safe? What's the safest way to perform heart surgery? What should government policy be on climate change? If science is going to be used by the public, other scientists, and policy makers to address these questions, they need to have trust in research findings and access to these findings. Trust and Access Scientists can build public trust in science through the use of ● rigour in the scientific method and ● replication (thorough repetition) of studies to solidify the evidence for a conclusion. We can assure access to science by ● lack of financial barriers and ● Tailoring communication of the outputs for specific audiences. Stakeholders in Science Designing accessible outputs for a particular audience means considering the prior knowledge, education, and needs of different stakeholders in science. What is a stakeholder? Anyone who can influence or can be affected by a matter. Examples of these could include government policy makers and funders, business and industry, politicians, environmentalists, patients, and the general public. 4 A Crisis Much of the scientific community was shocked in 2005 when researcher, John Ioannidis, wrote a paper in the PLOS Medicine journal explaining “Why Most Published Research Findings are False.” Ioannidis was criticizing the rigour of the scientific process used by researchers in medicine. His statement sparked a movement that started questioning whether or not published studies could be replicated: that is, could they withstand a test of their burden of proof? Since Ioannidis published his paper, this movement has grown into a crusade seeking to transform the culture and practices of scientific research. As a society and as a species, we face many challenges that require us to work together across geographical, social, political, and disciplinary boundaries. Solid science and public confidence in that science figure prominently in efforts to address such issues as health and wellness, climate change, and the need to make resource use sustainable. What’s needed is a revolution to improve knowledge sharing, quality, accessibility, and trust in science. Focus: Why Most Published Research Findings are False (Lab Exercise) Read the abstract (summary) of John Ioannidis’s article below and follow the reference link to view the full article. To discuss in lab: What factors did Ioannidis blame for the lack of reliability in research studies? How can these problems be addressed? There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research. Reference 5 Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2005). Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLOS Medicine 2(8): e124. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 Unit 1 Quiz Question 1 (1 pt) In 2005, a paper by medical researcher John Ionnadis revealed a major cause of the decline in public trust in science: we can’t rely on most modern research findings because ☐ they cannot be replicated (repeated in a thorough way to reinforce evidence for their conclusions) ☐ they aren’t reviewed by peers of the authors ☐ they are often based on fraudulent or otherwise unethical research. Question 2 (1 pt) Which of the following are reasons that the general public needs to be able to trust in science? Choose all that apply. ☐ science (for example, medical advances) can affect our daily lives in many ways ☐ government policy may be based on the advice of scientists ☐ many difficult problems facing the world today require scientific expertise, so we must be able to have confidence that the science behind efforts to combat these problems is solid Unit 2: What Exactly is Open Science (OS)? Unit 2 Objectives Introduction 6 In Unit 1 we discussed the burden of proof and the erosion of social and stakeholder trust in the sciences. This unit will explore a related issue: the ability to build up evidence for a scientific claim by repeating the original study to make sure that the finding, be it correlative or causal, is a true finding and is not just a fluke. Objectives After finishing this unit, you should be able to explain ● what the Replication Crisis is; and ● how Open Science proposes to address it.