CTSA News

Stanford University’s School of Medicine (SoM) Program on Research Rigor & Reproducibility (SPORR) hosted its second school-wide Rigor & Reproducibility Colloquium: Conversations on How to Future-Proof our Science on January 29, 2024. On February 1, SPORR’s CTSA institutional survey results on rigor and reproducibility were published in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science.

The colloquium featured introductory remarks from SoM Senior Associate Dean for Research Ruth O’Hara, Ph.D. and SPORR Director Steven Goodman, M.D., M.H.S., Ph.D. Dr. Goodman explained that SPORR was less focused on research misconduct than on research “dysconduct”—practices or procedures that weaken either the reliability of research findings or confidence in them. These were followed by plenary talks from Geeta K. Swamy, M.D. (Associate Vice President for Research, and Vice Dean for Scientific Integrity at Duke University) who spoke of the changes implemented at Duke University to promote a culture of research integrity, which led to a network of research quality representatives being embedded in every school department to help their faculty. Alexa T. McCray, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, the first head of Clinicaltrials.gov and the National Library of Medicine intramural research branch, described a two-year self-study she co-led on Harvard’s rigor and reproducibility (and responsibility—R3) practices that has led to a range of initiatives there.

The event also featured a roundtable with SoM faculty and staff on their recommended approaches to enhancing research rigor and reproducibility at Stanford. SPORR Director Dr. Goodman then described current and future SPORR activities, which included several new courses, an upcoming school-wide data management survey, and the establishment under Dr. O’Hara of a SoM Task Force on Research Practice and Culture. Finally, SPORR is working with SoM Vice Dean Linda Boxer on a new optional format for a SoM CV that can make faculty use of optimal research practices more visible in the appointment and promotions process.

SPORR gave out two monetary Rigor and Reproducibility—RaRe—Researcher Awards to early career researchers. One was to Jan Niklas Hansen, Ph.D., post-doc in the Lundberg lab, for creation of free software that allows complex image analysis of moving organisms. The second was to Kif Liakath-Ali, Ph.D., M.Sc., post-doc in the Sudhöf lab, for using rigorous experimental designs that debunked a previously accepted finding on neuronal plasticity, with the subsequent publication of a “negative” result that stimulated confirmation by others and had significant consequences for the field.

According to Dr. Goodman, “Stanford is home to some of the world’s most brilliant and creative biomedical scientists. SPORR is a community effort to harness that creativity—learning from each other—so our scientific ecosystem maximally benefits every SoM investigator. We should lead the world not only through our scientific output, but in how we do our science.”

The event recording can be seen here.

Just days after the colloquium, the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science published the results of an institutional survey conducted by Dr. Steve Goodman, Mario Malicki, Ph.D., M.A., M.D., and Cathrine Axfors, Ph.D. assessing the rigor and reproducibility activities of institutions funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). Read the article here.

About SPORR

SPORR is an initiative started in 2020 to train and assist Stanford School of Medicine investigators to optimize the rigor and reproducibility (“R&R”) of their research. SPORR is directed by Dr. Steven Goodman and is part of Spectrum, Stanford’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research and Education, directed by Dr. Ruth O’Hara, Senior Associate Dean of Research, and supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UL1TR003142.