Antibodies and research reproducibility

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A technical, open data sharing, behavioural, and policy challenge

Antibodies are one of the most important tools used in biomedical and fundamental biology research. They are known to be an important driver of irreproducibility in research, with issues around the quality of the reagents, the validation of the reagents for the specific purpose, variation in batches and the transparency of reporting of both methods and results. Although the problem may appear to be simple at first sight, the problem has persisted for more than a decade since it was first highlighted. This has led to some blaming manufacturers, and others blaming “lax” researchers. Like many other reproducibility problems in research, it is likely driven by several complex factors, and an effective solution likely involves changes to the research environment and culture.

The Only Good Antibodies (OGA) community was set up to try to address this problem. It is a diverse cross disciplinary collaboration of individuals and partner organisations with interests in biomedical research, behavioural science, meta science, data science and research assessment. This seminar will introduce the problem, primarily with a focus on understanding different models of addressing similar problems throughout research.

The seminar will include:

Antibodies in research: how did it get to this? A background to the problem and an understanding of previous and current research on the drivers of the problem. Dr Virk and Dr Biddle (OGA), University of Leicester, UK.

Creating an Open Science Ecosystem to work with industry for the greater good, lessons from YCharOS. Dr Carl Laflamme, Dr Riham Ayoubi, YCharOS, University of McGill, Canada.

Unique identification of research resources, RRID and automated research assessment as a potential solution – progress and remaining challenges. Professor Anita Bandrowsi, SciCrunch and University of California San Diego.

Discussion session: learning from each other – models of working with stakeholders including publishers, industry, research funders and the wider research community to affect positive research culture and environment changes. Discussion led by Dr Sarah Gunn, UKRN Local Network Lead, University of Leicester, UK

By joining this workshop you are agreeing to follow the UKRN code of conduct.

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