Comment in 2023

Off-task behaviours, such as media multitasking, are frequent in social science experiments and are especially common during online data collection. Such off-task behaviour can affect the quality of research data, making it crucial to understand the nature of this behaviour and to account for its influences.

Research funding determines the course of science and thus shapes future knowledge. However, funding allocation is inherently biased, non-optimal and costly. We present a Shiny app that simulates the effects of funding scenarios on costs, diversity and quality. We advocate a lottery at the beginning to promote inclusion.

The current science system is unjust — from the systems that determine its membership to its outputs and outcomes. We advocate for contextually responsive, collective action to build a more just science system that demonstrates a relational duty of care to all its participants. To achieve this, we urge the science community to harness the powerful processes of complexity with deliberate intent.

Early-career researchers in Australia report dissatisfaction, bullying and questionable research practices. We discuss how this may contribute to the replication crisis and suggest local and international strategies to improve the industry.

Victims frequently report immobility during rape and sexual assault, often using the term ‘freezing’. Neuroscientific evidence suggests fear and threat can block cortical neural circuits for action control, leading to involuntary immobility. Defence arguments that blame victims for freezing are thus inappropriate and unjust.

The metaverse can improve the accessibility of scientific laboratories and meetings, aid in reproducibility efforts and provide new opportunities for experimental design. But researchers and research institutions must plan ahead and be ready to mitigate potential harms.

The African Union has committed to gender equity for the continent. Yet women are underrepresented in education, in the workplace and in leadership positions. We must act now to achieve gender equity and combat existing structures of discrimination. We propose actions to help women to get there, stay there and thrive as leaders.

At Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, President Erdoğan’s policies and appointments are overturning the long-held liberal values of the institution. In an ongoing struggle of resistance against these actions, the faculty protest daily in the name of academic freedom and university autonomy.

An analysis of 2,500 public-health claims reveals that organizations rarely communicate uncertainties around the benefits of behavioural change. To be ethical, public-health communication should be accurate and transparent.

‘Big team’ science challenges researchers to revisit three issues around authorship: (1) how to define authorship-worthy contributions, (2) how contributions should be documented and (3) how disagreements among large teams of coauthors should be handled. We propose steps that the community can take to resolve these issues.

The ‘makeshift medicine’ framework describes how individuals address healthcare needs when they are unable to access the US healthcare system. The framework is applied to gender-affirming care, the health of people who inject drugs and abortion access. Recommendations for future research, advocacy and policy are made.

Governments make efforts to measure citizens’ wellbeing, and the indicators are constantly evaluated. Evidence across the social and medical sciences shows that pain is a socioeconomic, psychosocial and behavioural phenomenon. Governments should incorporate the systematic measurement of pain into metrics of wellbeing.

Behavioural science involves understanding humans. However, it fails if it develops a limited understanding of humanity — 17% of whom who live in Africa. Africa’s voice must therefore be included in behavioural science research. Collaborations with African researchers should be grounded in respect.

High-quality research requires appropriate employment and working conditions for researchers. However, many academic systems rely on short-term employment contracts, biased selection procedures and misaligned incentives, which hinder research quality and progress. We discuss ways to redesign academic systems, emphasizing the role of permanent employment.

The language used when reporting racial and ethnic disparities in vaccine intentions and uptake must evolve to reflect social and structural inequities. To achieve health equity, we must acknowledge the extent to which racism and health inequities serve as barriers to vaccine-seeking behaviours among people of colour.

Two publications have called for the redefinition of statistical significance as 0.005, or justification of the alpha. We argue that these papers expose a vicious cycle: scientists do not adopt recommendations because they are not standard, and they are not standard because few scientists adopt them. We call on journals and preregistration platforms to mandate alpha-level statements.

In Iran, women and men protest day and night for women, life and liberty. The moment has come for the international academic community to take action to remove the obstacles faced by Iran’s scholarly community, and join the call for equality, democracy and human rights.

Registration has been proposed as a possible solution to the reproducibility crisis in scientific research. In its more than 20 years of practice in biomedical research, registration has been valuable — but it is still largely limited to clinical trials, and its implementation is still largely inconsistent.