A sample of responses from the debate on the reproducibility drive (M. Bissell Nature 503, 333–334; 2013).

Nitin Gandhi says:

The very fact that we have to take the issue of replication so seriously and spend lots of time and money on it in these hard times speaks out loudly that things are not right in biomedical research.

William Gunn says:

The Reproducibility Initiative aims to make science work better for everyone [see go.nature.com/v5c1js]. The worst that could happen is that we learn a lot about what level of reproducibility to expect and how to reliably build on a published finding. At best, funders will start tacking a few per cent on to grants for replication purposes and publishers will start asking for it. That can only be good for science as a whole.

Anonymous says:

I would be a rich man if I had received a penny for every time I heard the expression “in our hands” at a scientific lecture. I disagree that “the push to replicate findings could shelve promising research and unfairly damage the reputations of careful, meticulous scientists”. I believe that the opposite is true.

Scientists should be encouraged to report and publish when they fail to replicate each other's experiments. That will help science (but maybe not scientific careers) progress much faster.

Irakli Loladze says:

The current system does not penalize for publishing sexy but non-reproducible findings. In fact, such publications boost the chances of getting another grant. It is about time to end this vicious cycle that benefits a few but hurts science at large.