The scientific community in many fields (e.g. ischemic stroke, cancer) is grappling with a lack of translation from bench to bedside therapies. There are many factors that have resulted in this crisis, I think one is scientific rigor.
I learned about the lack of translation in the stroke field when I began my postdoctoral work 12 years ago at the Charité University Medicine. I was not sure how I could help. I did some reading about how to increase scientific rigor. I learned more and implemented the following: for my postdoctoral work and since starting my independent position, I decided to include both female and male animals in my experiments. I started doing power calculations prior to starting experiments. I also recruited students to help complete blinded data analysis of behavioral tests and microscopy analysis.
I learned about the lack of translation in the stroke field when I began my postdoctoral work 12 years ago at the Charité University Medicine. I was not sure how I could help. I did some reading about how to increase scientific rigor. I learned more and implemented the following: for my postdoctoral work and since starting my independent position, I decided to include both female and male animals in my experiments. I started doing power calculations prior to starting experiments. I also recruited students to help complete blinded data analysis of behavioral tests and microscopy analysis.
In 2019, I joined the eLife ambassador program and attended a Reproducibility for Everyone (R4E) workshop. This workshop opened the doors to how I can increase scientific rigor. R4E is a global, community-led reproducibility education initiative. R4E runs practical and accessible workshops to introduce the concept of reproducibility to researchers. They demonstrate reproducible tools and methods that can improve research by making it more efficient, transparent, and rigorous. Every R4E workshop is customized for the audience. Since 2018, R4E volunteer instructors have reached over 2500 researchers around the world through over 40 workshops.
The workshop introduces reproducible workflows and a range of tools along the themes of organization, documentation, analysis, and dissemination. After a brief introduction to the topic of reproducibility, the workshop provided specific tips and tools useful in improving daily research workflows. The content included modules such as data management, electronic lab notebooks, reproducible bioinformatics tools and methods, protocol and reagent sharing, data visualization, and version control. All modules included interactive learning, real-time participation, and active knowledge sharing.
When I opened my lab, I implemented electronic lab notebook for my research group. I have continued to increase scientific rigor practices in my laboratory. I also got more involved in R4E and became the chair of the advisory board. I have spoken about my journey to become a more rigorous scientist, including the NINDS Becoming a Champion for Rigor session at Society for Neuroscience meeting in 2023.
Today my involvement includes updating the R4E workshop, adding details about statistical and microscopy rigor. We have also launched training webinars targeted at the international audience about how to increase statistical rigor and conducting effective meta-analysis. This has been a great collaboration with Mike Malek-Ahmadi, PhD.
As a scientist I think it is important to learn and grow. I remember during my PhD I only used male mice for my behavioral neuroscience experiments. Thinking about that today makes me cringe, but I am fortunate that I have grown so much.
R4E has been a pivotal organization in my growth to become a more rigorous scientist. There are many ways to get involved with R4E and I have listed them below.
Sign up to be a volunteer: https://repro4everyone.org/join
Sign up for our newsletter: https://share.hsforms.com/1JClefykAQm-xpGHwwyCYqAsq2hh
Request a workshop: https://forms.gle/ooYT2UZrMtzUxA948