ReproducibiliTea: Meet the Journal of Trial and Error

The fourth OSCR ReproducibiliTea journal club will take place on February 12th at 11:00 in room J7-55 (Bayle building).

We will have two special guests: Max Bautista Perpinyà and Stefan Gaillard, two co-founders of the Journal of Trial and Error. In their talk¹, Max and Stefan will focus on the importance of publishing negative and null results, as well as other research results that would traditionally be considered “failure” such as unsuccessful chemical syntheses. They will go on to explore the questions surrounding the publication of such research. When is it useful to publish these types of results? How can scientists be convinced to share their non-significant or unexpected findings? Max and Stefan will show that the positive publication bias can only be addressed by addressing the sociotechnical system of science as a whole. They will propose a solution to this problem in the form of a platform that solely publishes negative results in combination with historical, philosophical, sociological and/or subject specific theoretical reflections. Based on their own experience with such a platform, Max and Stefan will explore the benefits and drawbacks of this novel approach.

In preparation for this meeting, we will read the Journal of Trial and Error’s manifesto as well as the following paper:

Bespalov, A., Steckler, T., & Skolnick, P. (2019). Be positive about negatives – recommendations for the publication of negative (or null) results. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 29(12), 1312–1320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2019.10.007

Although this article seems to focus only on neuropsychopharmacology, it is actually relevant for publishing “failure” in general.

An invitation on Outlook calendar has been sent to researchers in the ReproducibiliTea mailing list (if you want to be included, contact Antonio). Please explicitly Accept or Decline the invitation, so that catering and room capacity can be evaluated accordingly.