Published Writings
This piece at the Center for Effective Philanthropy's blog argues that strategic philanthropy relies too much on bureaucratic measures like lengthy proposals and reports. Instead, more philanthropists should trust their grantees to find the best ways to move forward.
* "Escaping Science's Paradox"
This piece at Works in Progress argues that innovation and reproducibility aren't at odds with each other, and in fact science could improve in both respects by being more tolerant of null results and by engaging in more "red teaming" of scientific findings.
* "How Philanthropy Could Embrace More High-Risk, High-Reward Projects"
This piece in Inside Philanthropy contends that philanthropy is too drawn to safe and incremental projects, and offer suggestions for how philanthropists and foundations could make room for higher-reward opportunities.
* "Why Your Company Needs Reproducible Research"
This piece argues that corporations and other organizations that rely on research and evidence need to make sure that they are getting reliable information.
* "Why Are Investors Eager to Lose Money on Health Tech?"
This piece argues that health tech investors ought to do more due diligence to make sure that the science is rigorous and reproducible.
* "Universities and Research Transparency: Are Times Changing?"
This piece points out the role that universities can play in improving scientific reproducibility.
* "'Policy-Based Evidence' Doesn't Always Get It Backward"
This piece argues that evidence-based policy needs to be driven by actual policy needs, rather than by generating evidence in a vacuum.
This piece argues that while replications have historically been disfavored by publications due to their low citation count, large-scale replication projects are attracting so much attention that they are more publishable.
* "The Principles of Tomorrow's University."
In this piece -- which arose out of a workshop sponsored by NIH and NSF -- numerous co-authors and I present a vision for a university system that is organized around principles of openness and transparency.
* "How Open Science Helps Researchers Succeed"
In this piece in the journal eLife, numerous co-authors and I argue that open and transparent research practices can help researchers through citations and other opportunities for collaboration.
* "Why Journalists Should Stop Publishing Studies Conducted With Mice"
This piece argues that mice studies are so flawed and so unlikely to lead to benefits in humans that they shouldn't be reported in newspapers. One of the John Oliver show's writers saw this piece, and had me advise them extensively on the script for an episode on scientific reproducibility.
In this piece for Scientific American, I point out the flaws in how death statistics are collected and reported, and argue that "big data" can't provide us with reliable answers if the underlying data points are misrecorded.
* "Promoting an Open Research Culture"
In this piece for Science, numerous co-authors and I introduced a new set of guidelines for scientific journals, which we called the Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines (TOP). The TOP Guidelines have since been adopted by thousands of journals.
In this editorial in Science, I argue that philanthropy should help support scientific infrastructure as a public good that enables greater openness and rigor.
* "Sharing Data from Past Clinical Trials."
In this piece for BMJ's website, I argue for greater sharing of data from clinical trials.
In this piece in Slate, I critique a study that had been reported as showing that parents of college graduates live longer.