When Shared Data Is Not Reproducible: Science Is Broken–But It Can Be Fixed

In July of 2014, the United States government joined the growing conversation about scientific reproducibility when the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Council asked in a public request for information:

Given recent evidence of the irreproducibility of a surprising number of published scientific findings, how can the Federal Government leverage its role as a significant funder of scientific research to most effectively address the problem?

This is indeed a significant issue – replicability is one of the fundamental tenets of the scientific process, and trust in the scientific method is critical for future funding of both basic and applied research. The American public will not fund efforts it does not trust. And there is good reason to be skeptical in this case. One official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told The Economist in 2013 that researchers would find it hard to reproduce at least three-quarters of all published biomedical findings. This is hardly confidence building.