PCI Webinar Series
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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.