ATGthePodcast 122 - Conversation with Ewoud Compeer, Oxford University

Against the Grain - The Podcast

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.