Notes from the March 23 Session at ENAR on Ethics in Biostatistics, with an emphasis on Reproducible Research

This web page is designed to hold files from the ENAR special invited session on Research Ethics in Biostatistics, with an emphasis on Reproducible Research. Some case studies related to the formation of this committee are presented in the manuscript Deriving Chemosensitivity from Cell Lines: Forensic Bioinformatics and Reproducible Research in High-Throughput Biology by Keith A. Baggerly and Kevin R. Coombes (the main page is here) and Subsequent Reports (available here).

Session Description

On March 23, ENAR held a special invited panel discussion on Research Ethics in Biostatistics and the Biostatistician's Role. The chair, David Banks, gave an introduction and overview, after which the panelists (Larry Kessler, Keith Baggerly, and Roger Peng) each gave brief presentations touching on four questions they had been asked to address:
1. What is an investigator's personal responsibility with respect to research ethics (including reproducibility) in his/her own laboratory?
2. What role, if any, should journals serve in ensuring reproducibility?
3. What is the institutional role?
4. What is the responsibility of federal agencies with respect to reproducibility and research ethics? How does this differ when the agency is in the role of the grantor (e.g., NIH) versus the role of a regulator (e.g., FDA)?
This was followed by a fairly active question and answer period.


Session Documents

After the session, I compiled a written summary of the presentations and questions. These made use of individual files supplied by the presenters, some additional contributed files (including course notes from Victoria Stodden) and my own notes from the session. Jeff Morris also later wrote a review that appeared in the Jan-Mar 2011 issue of the Biometric Bulletin (vol 28, no 1). The specific files:

1. My post-session survey
2. Pre-session notes from David Banks
3. Pre-session notes from Larry Kessler
4. Pre-session notes from Keith Baggerly
5. Pre-session notes from Roger Peng
6. Flyer for a course on Reproducible Research being offered by Victoria Stodden at Columbia, Spring 2011 (this is actually a .docx file, but for some reason IE seems to change the suffix to .zip).
7. Stodden course guidelines
8. Stodden course syllabus
9. Biometric Bulletin vol 28, no 1; Jeff's overview appears on p.12-14.


Session WAV Audio Files

WAV files from the session are given below in the order in which they were presented.

1. David Banks Intro and Overview (6 min, 30 sec), and Larry Kessler Presentation, 17 min, 4 sec; 22.6 Mb
2. Keith Baggerly Presentation, 15 min, 50 sec; 20.9 Mb
3. Roger Peng Presentation, 12 min, 57 sec; 17.1 Mb
4. Panelist Discussion, in which the panelists tried to address points raised other panelists. 6 min, 28 sec; 8.6 Mb
5. Question and Answer Session with the audience. 33 min, 49 sec; 43.8 Mb