The IU School of Public Health-Bloomington has received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a workshop and yearlong process titled Rigor, Reproducibility, and Transparency (RRT) at the Interdisciplinary Interface. The application was prepared by Dean David Allison, Justin Otten, and Andrew Brown from within the SPH and includes multiple IU Bloomington collaborators from beyond the SPH. The workshop will initiate a one-year process to identify priorities and infrastructure needs for a coordinated, interdisciplinary set of research and research training activities on promoting RRT in science. The goal is that the workshop and process will improve the understanding and implementation of RRT and position IU to pursue the most informative and needed work in this area.

The workshop will be held in the coming months on the IU Bloomington campus, and will identify priorities for an interdisciplinary set of research and research training activities on promoting RRT in science writ large. During the workshop, experts from around the country will speak, consult, and plan on the topic of RRT. The event will act as a catalyst for establishing the infrastructure needed to pursue the priorities identified.

The workshop objectives are driven by the growing interdisciplinary nature of research, the complexity of the data, computational demands, the ability to detect errors in published literature, and other pressures on scientists. By allowing a community of scholars to focus on the potential improvements in research RRT, the workshop will translate into clearer research aims and proposals leading to improved research and greater fidelity of research communication. This work will thus culminate in a comprehensive, carefully prioritized plan delineating the most critical research and research training needs which IU is well poised to pursue.  

“The scientific community has done a great job identifying where science is not being conducted as rigorously as we hoped, but now we are ready to move beyond identifying problems to bolstering rigor, reproducibility, and transparency in science,” said Dr. Andrew Brown, an assistant professor at the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington. Dr. Brown will be working on the project along with Dr. Justin Otten, Director of Global Health Affairs at the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation makes grants primarily to support original research and education related to science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics. The Sloan Foundation believes that these fields, and the scholars and practitioners who work in them, are chief drivers of the nation’s health and prosperity. The Sloan Foundation also believes that a reasoned, systematic understanding of the forces of nature and society, when applied inventively and wisely, can lead to a better world for all.