Launched 0n February 4, 2016: the new online journal The Preclinical Reproducibility and Robustness Channel. Ok, sure, the title isn’t enticing–but the purpose of the journal is to replicate and test the experiments of others, and it’s kind of sexy that someone is trying to correct a big problem in the competitive world of scientific publications. We put so much teaching emphasis on the need to find vetted, peer-reviewed sources, and yet over and over, students find that the publish-or-perish culture promotes sloppy practices (have them check out The Journal of Irreproducible Results if you want them to see the light side of the problem). This new journal highlights why it is so important for students to become excellent critical readers of published works, questioning the strength of study design and of course, reproducibility. (Information on the new journal found in the Feb. 6 2016 edition of The Economist).
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