Raphael Levy, University of Liverpool

Date: 

Thursday, July 9, 2020, 12:00pm

Location: 

Zoom (registration required)

 

What proportion of scientific articles in bionanoscience are correct and reproducible?

In theory, science progresses through new experiments, but also replications, challenges and confrontation of ideas. In practice, no direct replications ever occur in bionanoscience, and whilst a few welcome scientific debates have emerged over the past few years (e.g. on targeting following Warren Chan’s review), this remains the exception. Anyone who has tried to published critical or negative articles has stories to tell about that difficult enterprise. I certainly have a few. What do these anecdotes reveal about the possibility of correcting the scientific record? What proportion of scientific articles in bionanoscience are correct and reproducible? How much of our ideas regarding the properties of nanoparticles and their interactions with biological systems are founded on solid experiments as opposed to high impact papers that are cited hundreds of times but contain little evidence and are never reproduced? And, importantly, how can we improve the current state of our field. I don’t pretend to have the answers to these questions, but I’ll give it a try and I will be delighted to discuss them with you.