Evolution Congress symposium on 'Replicability & Reproducibility' in ecology & evolutionary biology

DALL·E generated image showing a group of evolutionary biologists engaged in a lively discussion on the theme of reproducibility & replicability.

Shinichi Nakagawa & I have organized a symposium for the 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology to be held next summer in Montreal, Canada & that might be of interest to some people people on who frequent this blog.

The theme of the symposium is “Replicability & Reproducibility in Ecological & Evolutionary Research” and the underlying idea is to feature talks focused both on analysis reproducibility, good research practices for replicability (such as pre-registration, blinding, etc.), and the “science of science” (e.g., meta-science aimed at measuring research reliability & improving scientific practices).

Here are some more details.

What: A symposium on “Replicability & Reproducibility in Ecological & Evolutionary Research” at the 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology (2024), (https://www.evolutionmeetings.org/)

Where: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

When: July 26-30, 2024 (the exact date for the symposium TBA)

About: A collection of diverse presentations on reproducibility and “research on research” (meta-research/meta-science) in ecology and evolution.

Goal: Via the symposium, we increase the awareness of research issues and inefficiencies in ecology and evolution to promote open, reliable and transparent sciences.

How to attend: Many conference support grants are available for students and early career researchers (e.g., conference fee waiver and travel support). See a collection of them here.

What you need to do now: Apply for a grant right now. Regular conference registration & abstract submission for the Evolution Joint Congress is already open! Please consider submitting your talk to our symposium! Even if your talk is not accepted by our symposium, all talks submitted by the deadline will be accepted for the conference and placed in an appropriate session.

Organizers and contacts: Please send any questions to symposium co-organizers Shinichi Nakagawa and/or Liam Revell. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have questions about the symposium!

Proposal: A growing number of fields across the medical & social sciences have identified what’s become known as a “crisis of reproducibility,” typically manifesting as studies & meta-analyses that point to low reproducibility of key research findings. In one well-knownexample, an industry lab attempted to replicate 52 important preclinical results of cancer biology and was only able to duplicate key findings in 6 of these. Though evolutionary biology has yet to encounter its own replication crisis, survey data and other information suggest that research practices known to be linked to low reproducibility are probably widespread. This symposium invites diverse perspectives on replicability & reproducibility, open science, the impact of research practices on the reliability of findings, & ‘meta-science’ (the science of science) to help ask if ecology & evolutionary biology is on the cusp of its own replication crisis & what can be done about it.