Comments on: The National Institute of Replicating Discoveries, Y’all (NIRDY)

By: Jason Snyder

Jason Snyder — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:24:21 +0000

Yeah I appreciate your frustration but don’t think it’s so dire. The situation is bad but I think enough people like you have identified the problems exist and now, in fact, you do have journals that will publish findings that are “merely” replications and don’t decide the publishability of a paper based on arbitrary judgements of interestingness (e.g. PLoS ONE). You also have alternative means for publishing data online in a non-peer reviewed manner, and slowly tools are being developed that allow for tracking these types of contributions (thus, incentives aside from impact factor are emerging).

By: Max

Max — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:41:17 +0000

The idea is good. However, a huge obstacle is ahead: The way science is being done and the “rewards” are all flawed. Why? Because for scientists, the only way to “survive” is by publishing so-called “original science”. But who decided that? The Journals and the editors of those journals, who in turn are worried about one thing: Impact Factor. And who invented the impact factor? The ISI (Institute for Scientific Information). Do you know who owns ISI? Thomson Reuters! Yes, that infamous ISI (and Thomson Reuters by extension) is the very diabolic influence that has corrupted the whole science field, by putting tags, ranking by numbers about everything they want. So here we are, all scientists struggling to produce papers describing new “discoveries” because that is what gets published! No journal is really interested in publishing replication works. Period. Or when that happens, is because the authors have been clever or because the journal in question has nothing better to publish (read: “discovery”)! This frantic pace obviously led to publication of dubious results and flawed experiments with wrong conclusions, as it was pointed out by Ioannidis:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/

We need a revolution. We need change, but the system is corrupted to the core.

By: Lucas Glover

Lucas Glover — Fri, 20 May 2011 18:56:27 +0000

This is an interesting idea. I do not know if it would slow down the progress of science or speed it up. On the other hand, it may take longer for science to progress, but, in the long run, it may make more accurate predictions and squeeze out the more reliable findings… but is it worth the time? If the government did this, how would it impact clinical trials of novel experimental procedures/drugs or even research on a basic mechanistic approaches? The NIH (/collectively/) has a responsibility of, yes, correcting science where needed but also producing novel science (maybe dedicate a branch of NIH to NIRDY)

Of course you do have some reproducing occurring of older experiments in which the new build atop. It’s the experiments where the methodology is rather confusing, whether it be technique or # of experiments needed to make a point that are not likely to be reproduced. Rather, the simple, yet elegant experiments become more reliable, either because they are simple to do in the lab OR they cut straight to the point of the research question at hand and the new need to show “this” to build atop.

Jason, is this a more filling comment as compared to my others?

By: Melvin Morse

Melvin Morse — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:27:30 +0000

Hilarious and insightful. Love the comment that to truly replicate some studies the mice should be re-used.
I sent this to the top 80+ consciousness researchers in the world.
Melvin L Morse MD

By: NatC

NatC — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:25:38 +0000

It’s not all grunt work either – NIRDY (love the acronym) could be responsible for both replication AND alternative directions/explanations. There are a lot of glam-mag publications with data accompanied by a great story that becomes dogma, but sometimes there are plausible, testable alternative explanations…

By: katiesci

katiesci — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:41:14 +0000

I love this idea. I’ve always been frustrated with the lack of replication too. Plus, the acronym is just too awesome; how could any scientist NOT be on board with NIRDY?