PCI Webinar Series

We are pleased to announce the 2nd seminar of the PCI webinar series:

15th of June 2023 at 4 pm CET (until 5.15 pm) via Zoom

Publication bias in ecology and evolutionary biology

by Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar (Department of Evolutionary Biology, Bielefeld University, Germany)

Online via Zoom, please use this link to register: https://univ-cotedazur.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0oduugqT0sGtfwdXVvuZmoQujS394f-S1C

Summary:

Recently, several worldwide multi-lab replication attempts in the social sciences and medicine have exposed alarmingly low rates of replicability of scientific findings. This ‘Replication Crisis’ – perhaps better named ‘Credibility revolution’, has been the catalysts of a movement towards more open, reliable and transparent science. Although the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology currently lack multi-lab replication projects of similar magnitude to those in the social sciences and medicine, we can obtain indirect but key information about replicability by studying publication bias. Publication bias occurs when a subset of research findings, such as statistically non-significant results, are less likely to appear (or appear earlier) in the scientific literature, leading to a distorted view of the overall evidence for a hypothesis. In this talk, I will introduce (1) what publication bias is and the most commonly observed types of publication bias, (2) briefly explain how we can study publication bias, and (3) showcase some of the most outstanding and worrying examples of publication bias (past and present) in ecology and evolutionary biology. I will finish off my talk by introducing and discussing a few procedure that can help researchers actively combat publication bias and, thus, lead to a less distorted understanding of the natural world.

Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar is a Principal Investigator at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Bielefeld University, Germany. He combines evidence synthesis, meta-research, and empirical studies to answer questions in ecology and evolution. He strongly supports open science and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (SORTEE). Visit his website.

***************************
What is the PCI webinar series?

-What is it? Seminars on research practices, publication practices, evaluation, scientific integrity, meta-research.
-How does it work? Remote conferences using zoom with registration.
-For whom is it? For anyone interested in scholarly publication, all PCI users, all PCI recommenders who do preprint evaluations for PCI, authors of articles, etc.
-When is it? Once a quarter
-Why is it for? To learn about scholarly publishing, to improve our knowledge about scholarly review, to become better reviewers, to create a sense of community among PCI users. 

Webinars to come:

21st Sept 2023 – Chris Chambers – Registered Reports 2.0: rigorous open science beyond journals and publishers

Past webinars: follow this link