Science is broken; let’s fix it. This has been my mantra for some years now, and today we are launching an initiative aimed squarely at one of science’s biggest problems. The problem is called publication bias or the file-drawer problem and it’s resulted in what some have called a replicability crisis.

Below are research presentations I’m involved in for Vision Sciences Society in May. If you’re attending VSS, don’t forget about the Publishing, Open Access, and Open Science satellite which will be Friday at 11am.

Bradley Voytek spotted a disturbing question in an official “Responsible Conduct of Research” training program: This defense of the status quo has no place in a “Responsible Conduct of Research” training program. It reads like the old guard self-interestedly maintaining the current system by foisting unjustified beliefs onto young researchers!

Blind justice. A beautiful ideal! That the merits of a case are to be decided without regard to the identities of the parties involved or the size of their bank accounts. This is something science aspires to in evaluating manuscripts for publication.

Quodlibet is an obscure word that originally referred to a medieval event that included a debate. I haven’t been able to find much information about it, but here is a brief description from Graham (2007): I’m interested in this because I rue the lack of debates in modern science. Perhaps it’s only an accident of history that real debates aren’t happening much nowadays.

Richard Feynman, in his 1974 cargo-cult science commencement address: Unfortunately, the average scientific journal article doesn’t follow this principle. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the average article is just a sales job, but the emphasis is really on giving the information that favors the author’s theory.

Scientific theories are alive. They are debated and actively questioned. Scientists have differing views, strong and informed ones. However, the system of science tends to mask the debate. In the scientific literature, differences are aired, but rarely in a way that most people would recognize as a debate. ‘Debate’ evokes a vision of two parties concisely articulating their positions, disputing points, and rebutting each other.

How do you get on top of the literature associated with a controversial scientific topic? For many empirical issues, the science gives a conflicted picture. Like the role of sleep in memory consolidation, the effect of caffeine on cognitive function, or the best theory of a particular visual illusion. To form your own opinion, you’ll need to become familiar with many studies in the area.

First were the Climategate emails. There, Lack of transparency in climate data analyses and climate models contributed to the doubts of skeptics regarding climate change, and made it easier for the skeptics to convince the public that there is good reason for skepticism. Now, the Marc Hauser affair has cast a shadow across another sub-area of science. How can we prevent these scientific fiascos from occurring in the future?

To what extent should we have confidence in the average published scientific result? The news that Professor Marc Hauser of Harvard University may have been involved in scientific misconduct, yielding irreproducible results, prompts us to reflect on whether irreproducible results are usually caught, or not.