Guest Presenter:  Dr. Jean-Baptiste Poline (Associate Professor at McGill University)

Talk Title: Cultural and Technical Issues Regarding Reproducibility in Brain Sciences and Possible Individual and Community Responses.

Abstract: The credibility of scientific activity has recently been under scrutiny with reports questioning the reproducibility of results. In response to this “reproducibility crisis”, the National Institute of Health (NIH) designed a plan for more reproducible science in 2015, but progress to curb the issue seems to be slow at best. It is possible that the solutions proposed by the NIH are targeting symptoms rather than causes.
In this talk, I will first consider the field of neuroscience and human neuroimaging and analyse the main causes of irreproducibility, considering the statistical and computational aspects of neuroimaging or imaging genetics. I will then discuss the social components that are likely to contribute to irreproducibility. In a second part, I will review solutions to foster a more reproducible research at the level of the tools and the statistical methods used – for example in high dimensions.  I will also consider the academic ecosystem and propose community actions that are both possible and could be effective to reshape the way we practice research.