There are growing concerns over erosion of the public’s trust in scientific research, which ultimately affects whether research truly benefits society. In agriculture, especially in topics related to sustainable production, a recurring theme is how well research can be confirmed by other researchers. This is largely an issue of ensuring that all stages of research are well documented and that as far as possible, datasets, models and other software are made available. We have authored a Perspectives piece in the journal Sustainable Agriculture that discusses the need to improve confirmation in agricultural research: “From field to analysis: strengthening reproducibility and confirmation in research for sustainable agriculture“.
From the Abstract: Lack of robustness and potential bias are growing concerns for research, including for sustainable agriculture. Research confirmation requires independent duplication of field experiments, modeling and other analyses. Key concepts include “repeatability” (consistency within an experiment), “replicability” (same team, different environments), and “reproducibility” (independent team, different environments). Researchers must improve workflow descriptions, especially regarding crop environments and management. A useful metric is how well research could be reproduced in ten years.
We invite the DSSAT community to reflect on whether their current research satisfies criteria for reproducibility. and if not, what they can do to strengthen their research process.
