Antibodies and Research Reproducibility: A technical, open data, behavioural, and policy challenge
Channel: UK Reproducibility Network
Date: 2023-09-28

This is a recording of the UKRN webinar "Antibodies and Research Reproducibility" held on Thursday 21 September 2023.

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.

Speakers: 
- Dr Sarah Gunn, UKRN Local Network Lead, University of Leicester, UK
- Dr Harvinder Virk, OGA, and University of Leicester, UK
- Dr Michael Biddle, OGA, and University of Leicester, UK
- Dr Carl Laflamme, YCharOS, and University of McGill, Canada.
- Professor Anita Bandrowsi, SciCrunch, and University of California San Diego

0:00:00 Introductions - Sarah Gunn

0:01:55 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 Harv Virk and Dr Michael Biddle

0:32:29 Creating an Open Science Ecosystem to work with industry for the greater good, lessons from YCharOS - Dr Carl Laflamme

0:58:19 Unique identification of research resources, RRID and automated research assessment as a potential solution – progress and remaining challenges - Professor Anita Bandrowsi

1:23:52 Panel discussion

1:52:34 Thanks and webinar close

Slides provided are available here: https://osf.io/73gmj/

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