Metaresearch for Evaluating Reproducibility in Ecology and Evolution.

Fiona Fidler1, Yung En Chee1, Bonnie C Wintle1

  • 1Associate Professor Fiona Fidler (fidlerfm@unimelb.edu.au) holds a joint appointment in the School of BioSciences and the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies (History and Philosophy of Science Discipline) at the University of Melbourne, Australia; Fiona is interested in how scientists and experts make decisions. Bonnie C. Wintle is a postdoctoral fellow and Mark Burgman and Michael McCarthy are professors in the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia; they are interested in a broad range of topics related to environmental decisionmaking. Bonnie Wintle is now a research fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge. Yung En Chee is a senior research fellow in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia; Yung applies ecological and decision-analytic theory and models to conservation problems. Ascelin Gordon is a senior research fellow in the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group in the School of Global, Urban, and Social Studies at RMIT University, in Melbourne, Australia; Ascelin is broadly interested in modeling approaches for understanding the impacts of environmental policies. FF, YC, BW, MB and MM were involved in discussion group about reproducibility and type 1 errors in ecology in 2014, which helped develop the outline for this article. AG and FF independently discussed the application of open science initiatives in ecology. FF wrote the first draft; YC wrote sections on data and code sharing with substantial input from AG. BW, MB, and MM made edits throughout.

Bioscience
|June 10, 2017
PubMed
Summary

Replication in ecology is facing challenges due to issues like low statistical power and publication bias. This study proposes metaresearch to assess the reproducibility of ecological evidence, offering proxy measures where direct replication is difficult.

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