Ana Paula Wasilewska-Sampaio
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Co-Authors: Olavo B. Amaral, Kleber Neves, Pedro Tan, Clarissa. F. D. Carneiro
The Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative: a systematic assessment of Brazilian biomedical science
The Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative is a multicenter systematic effort to assess the reproducibility of the country’s biomedical research. Our goal is to replicate 60-100 experiments from a 20-year random sample of published Brazilian articles in the life sciences, performing each experiment in 3 different laboratories. The first wave of experiments will include 67 labs performing experiments on rodents and cell lines using 3 common methods (MTT assay, RT-PCR, elevated plus maze). Although replications are intended to be direct, steps not described in the original article will be left open for each lab to fill independently. We will then evaluate whether the original result falls within the prediction interval defined by a meta-analysis of the replications. Besides obtaining the first national estimate of reproducibility within a field of science, our results will allow us to investigate what factors in a study might predict its successful replication.