Simple errors limit scientific scrutiny

摘要

Researchers have found more than half of the public datasets provided with scientific papers are incomplete, which prevents reproducibility tests and follow-up studies. However, slight improvements to research practices could make a big difference. Lead researcher Dr Dominique Roche from the Australian National University (ANU) said many peer-reviewed biological journals now require authors to publicly archive their data when a paper is published. 'Unfortunately, our study suggests that many public datasets may be unusable,' Roche said.