Jul 26, 2021
Today's episode features a conversation with Ewoud
Compeer of Oxford University. The interview was conducted
by Matthew Ismail, Editor in chief of the
Charleston Briefings and Conference Director at the Charleston
Conference.
Ewoud Compeer is a Dutch biomedical scientist and immunologist.
He's been doing research in the US, The Netherlands, Australia and
now in the UK at the University of Oxford. When studying the immune
system, he looks at how the immune cells communicate with one
another, and how they communicate so clearly and effectively.
Ewoud is interested in how the research environment in medical
science can be improved to be both more inclusive and more open and
transparent. He believes that the environment in which research
data and study design is not available along with published
research is no longer tenable and that this lack of transparency is
at the core of the reproducibility crisis (“The ability to
reproduce data, by yourself or by others, if you have the same
sample set and the same analysis workflow”). This lack of
reproducibility casts doubt on the findings of research and causes
a broader doubt about how robust published science really is. Ewoud
believes that we need to create an environment of open access to
publications and open data both to make research more rigorous and
to promote confidence that science can be trusted.
Ewoud founded a not-for-profit organization for dissemination of
science and scientists between the Netherlands and the UK. He's
also an eLife ambassador advocating for open science around the
world. He says now is the perfect time to talk about the
reproducibility crisis in science.