Save the Date! The MIT Better Science Ideathon

Read below for a message from our friends at MIT about The Better Science Ideathon on April 23rd! Click the link at the bottom to register now!

Save the Date!

The MIT Better Science Ideathon will take place on April 23, 2018 at the Industrial Meeting Center on the 12th floor of One Main Street. The event will have leaders in the space of reproducibility, including Andrew Gelman, John Ioannidis, Heather Piwowar, and Jeff Spies. 

The MIT Better Science Ideathon is brought to you by MIT Critical Data and PLOS ONE. The event has four objectives. The first is to bring together groups and develop initiatives to improve the research enterprise, focusing specifically on the biomedical field. The second is to draft a road map that connects isolated ongoing efforts – from new publication models to open-access research datasets to trail pre-registration – and aims to provide a clearer path forward. The third is to recruit social scientists into the movement given that socio-political forces have played a crucial role in molding the structure and practices of the biomedical research enterprise. Finally, the event aims to engage students at all levels – the future scientists – who are not yet entrenched in the current system to brainstorm and explore fresh ideas for the purpose of remedying the problems of irreproducibility and unreliable research. 

As John Ioannidis recently stated, the difficulty in translating basic research into effective therapies may hinge on the faulty underpinnings of published studies. For those who are concerned that the process of biomedical science does not meet its theoretical aims, our work is not the beginning, and certainly not the end. Rather, it joins a storied history of minds trying to figure out how to understand our world. The MIT Better Science Ideathon hopes to build on the energy of this movement. 

Capacity is limited so please register early:

https://betterscience.mit.edu/