On May 8th, the Center for Open Science (COS) hosted a celebration of their ten-year anniversary. The day-long conference showcased strategies and partnerships that have made a real impact on the culture of scientific research and looked towards the future to increase adoption and impact across open scholarship. Dr. Brian Nosek, Co-Founder and Director of COS, former FABBS Board member, welcomed the invited guests from the federal government and government agencies, as well as scientific societies. FABBS was honored to be a part of the event.
Two perspectives of particular interest to FABBS members came from journalist Christie Aschwanden, Five Thirty Eight, and Katie Corker, representing the Society for the Improvement of Psychology (SIP). Aschwanden shared her experience as a science journalist trying to cover the complexity of the scientific process in contrast with the pressure for neat and tidy headlines. She has come to the conclusion that Science Isn’t Broken — just a lot harder than people give it credit and the general public does not understand uncertainty. She has written several articles worth reading: Psychology’s Replication Crisis Has Made the Field Better ; Can Teamwork Solve One of Psychology’s Biggest Problems? and There’s No Such Thing As ‘Sound Science’. Dr. Corker shared the impetus for the creation of SIP in 2016. Activities include an annual conference, a preprint service, awards, grants and a journal, Collaborative Science Archives and Psychological Science Accelerator.
The final panel “The Big Picture: Perspectives from Change Agents” featured current and former federal policymakers.
- Arthur ‘Skip’ Lupia, served as Assistant Director, SBE, NSF
- Adam Russell, served as Acting Deputy Director of ARPA-H
- Tara Schwetz, current Acting Principal Deputy Director of NIH
- Alondra Nelson, served as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
These leaders reflected on their time serving at federal agencies in roles with opportunities and responsibilities to increase the rigor, impact, equity, and accessibility of federally funded data, noting that the Biden Administration has named 2023 the ‘year of open science.’
FABBS is very interested to hear from our members about their experiences complying with open science requirements. FABBS has been engaged with our federal colleagues to communicate concerns and successes from our fields. We are also in the process of developing Open Science resources for our members.
