Cancer studies pass reproducibility test

A high-profile project aiming to test reproducibility in cancer biology has released a second batch of results, and this time the news is good: Most of the experiments from two key cancer papers could be repeated. The latest replication studies, which appear today in eLife, come on top of five published in January that delivered a mixed message about whether high-impact cancer research can be reproduced. Taken together, however, results from the completed studies are “encouraging,” says Sean Morrison of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, an eLife editor. Overall, he adds, independent labs have now “reproduced substantial aspects” of the original experiments in four of five replication efforts that have produced clear results.

Reproducibility in Machine Learning-Based Studies: An Example of Text Mining

Reproducibility is an essential requirement for computational studies including those based on machine learning techniques. However, many machine learning studies are either not reproducible or are difficult to reproduce. In this paper, we consider what information about text mining studies is crucial to successful reproduction of such studies. We identify a set of factors that affect reproducibility based on our experience of attempting to reproduce six studies proposing text mining techniques for the automation of the citation screening stage in the systematic review process. Subsequently, the reproducibility of 30 studies was evaluated based on the presence or otherwise of information relating to the factors. While the studies provide useful reports of their results, they lack information on access to the dataset in the form and order as used in the original study (as against raw data), the software environment used, randomization control and the implementation of proposed techniques. In order to increase the chances of being reproduced, researchers should ensure that details about and/or access to information about these factors are provided in their reports.

trackr: A Framework for Enhancing Discoverability and Reproducibility of Data Visualizations and Other Artifacts in R

Research is an incremental, iterative process, with new results relying and building upon previous ones. Scientists need to find, retrieve, understand, and verify results in order to confidently extend them, even when the results are their own. We present the trackr framework for organizing, automatically annotating, discovering, and retrieving results. We identify sources of automatically extractable metadata for computational results, and we define an extensible system for organizing, annotating, and searching for results based on these and other metadata. We present an opensource implementation of these concepts for plots, computational artifacts, and woven dynamic reports generated in the R statistical computing language.

Improving the Reproducibility of Scientific Applications with Execution Environment Specification

This work makes its contribution by demonstrating the importance of execution environments for the reproducibility of scientific applications and differentiating execution environment specifications, which should be lightweight, persistent and deployable, from various tools used to create execution environments, which may experience frequent changes due to technological evolution. It proposes two preservation approaches and prototypes for the purposes of both result verification and research extension, and provides recommendations on how to build reproducible scientific applications from the start.

RCE Podcast Looks at Reproducibility of Scientific Results

In this RCE Podcast, Brock Palen and Jeff Squyres discuss Reproducible Neuroscience with RCE Podcast Chris Gorgolewski from Stanford. "In recent years there has been increasing concern about the reproducibility of scientific results. Because scientific research represents a major public investment and is the basis for many decisions that we make in medicine and society, it is essential that we can trust the results. Our goal is to provide researchers with tools to do better science. Our starting point is in the field of neuroimaging, because that’s the domain where our expertise lies."