We had nice session last week with a small gathering. As we shared stories of troubleshooting methods that used to work (protocols that didn't work with seasonal pollen or wildfire smoke, experiments that don't work when changing buildings with new water sources), folks suggested having more ways to connect with people who use the same organisms/methods digitally – like we used to do at conferences. An example is a university Slack channel for microbe focused people (from grad students to post-docs), where it's helpful to have so many people to bounce ideas off of and collaborate. Do you know of communities around your study animal/system/methods? We discussed how these communities and sharing how we troubleshoot and document protocols that stop working can help save our future selves time.
Below is a light digest of last week, and a reminder for your Seaside Chat. Our next call November 18 will focus on the project-oriented workflows to help collaboration and save time, and we'll have a guest speaker join as well. Looking forward to seeing you then!
Goals: We discussed strategies for troubleshooting methods and sharing negative results, and how to learn from them with your team
Task for next time: Listen to a podcast about protocols!
Have a Seaside Chat with your broader research group
Discuss how you troubleshoot and learn from negative results as a lab
Contribute to the Troubleshooting Guide. This is a starting list of how to to approach experiments that stop working to help save time for our future selves. Please contribute to the content and practice using protocols.io!
Why don't we share negative results, even if publishers will publish?
Won’t advance anyone’s career
Would rather spend time on something more exciting +1
Failing to reject the null isn’t the same thing as proving that the null is true, so the experiment may fail for lots of reasons and you don’t usually know why
Worried another researcher will say it’s because we don’t have the skills to do the thing correctly (impostor syndrome) - “We’re not sure that it’s wrong”
How would you like to learn from negative results?
What methods were tried before getting to the end-result publication. Just a blurb at the end even would be nice so I don’t make the same mistake.
When widely used methods don’t work +1
On protocols.io, If there was abstract, guideline, steps, -- if we added “troubleshooting”, “notes that didn’t work” would that be helpful? An explicit invitation to share the troubleshooting, backstory, common mistakes. Normalize it and welcome it +1
part of the pressure is getting it through peer-review. So this idea could be a lighter lift.
Hi @Openscapes/2021-sasi ,
We had nice session last week with a small gathering. As we shared stories of troubleshooting methods that used to work (protocols that didn't work with seasonal pollen or wildfire smoke, experiments that don't work when changing buildings with new water sources), folks suggested having more ways to connect with people who use the same organisms/methods digitally – like we used to do at conferences. An example is a university Slack channel for microbe focused people (from grad students to post-docs), where it's helpful to have so many people to bounce ideas off of and collaborate. Do you know of communities around your study animal/system/methods? We discussed how these communities and sharing how we troubleshoot and document protocols that stop working can help save our future selves time.
Below is a light digest of last week, and a reminder for your Seaside Chat. Our next call November 18 will focus on the project-oriented workflows to help collaboration and save time, and we'll have a guest speaker join as well. Looking forward to seeing you then!
Have a good week,
Lenny, Emma, Erin, Julie @lennyteytelman @emmaganley @erinmr
Digest: Cohort Call 5 [ 2021-sasi ]
CohortCalls folder - contains video recordings and completed agendas https://openscapes.github.io/2021-sasi - Cohort webpage
Goals: We discussed strategies for troubleshooting methods and sharing negative results, and how to learn from them with your team
Task for next time: Listen to a podcast about protocols!
Materials covered:
A few lines from shared notes in the Agenda doc:
Why don't we share negative results, even if publishers will publish?
How would you like to learn from negative results?