º£½ÇÉçÇø

Shinichi Nakagawa, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and CERC in Open Science and Synthesis in Ecology and Evolution. Photo supplied.

When evolutionary biologist Shinichi Nakagawa was a doctoral student researching house sparrows in the early 2000s, he figured an important step would be to synthesize all the existing findings on the species. After all, they’re the most widespread bird species, second only to chickens. Countless researchers around the world had already written papers about them. He wanted to ensure he was making an original, impactful contribution to his academic discipline.

However, Nakagawa quickly ran into a problem. Despite being published in reputable journals, the vast majority of the papers were missing information he needed, such as a description of the research methods used or information about sample size, for example. So, from his home base on Lundy, an island in the Bristol Channel separating Wales and southwest England, the young scholar began the tedious task of writing to the authors, one by one, trying to fill in the gaps.

It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was the first step down the path that would define the next phase of his academic career. Nakagawa realized that the way we do science needed to fundamentally change — and he could be the one to lead that charge.

The information gaps were frustrating and he knew he wasn’t the only scientist encountering them. “I thought, it’s really important to raise awareness of how poor this reporting is,” he says. “That’s how I got started.”

At the time, Nakagawa was spending at least three months a year out in the field, from Antarctica to New Zealand, studying different birds. This shift in scientific focus would mean turning his attention to another subject — scientists themselves.

^{Nakagawa's research aims to close the scientific gap — improving the science of science. Illustration by Pete Ryan.}

The primary focus of his research program is metascience, often referred to as “the science of science.” And it’s the focus of the centre he’s establishing at the º£½ÇÉçÇø in his position as a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Open Science and Synthesis in Ecology and Evolution.

“Metascience is sort of a philosophy of science,” Nakagawa explains. “We’re studying how science should be done.”

As he learned in Lundy, papers are often missing critical information. Sometimes it was simply a lack of detail about how exactly they conducted a particular component of their study. An otherwise small oversight by the original researcher would make it impossible for another scientist to replicate the experiment, a phenomenon aptly termed “the replication crisis.”

And, since “there’s no policing apart from relying on the honesty of each individual scientist,” inaccuracies frequently sneak through undetected.

“According to one of our surveys, 60 to 70 per cent of scientists engaged in some sort of questionable research practice,” Nakagawa says. These practices run the gamut from an oversight in reporting to — thankfully rare — fraud.

His solution? Harness all the tools in our collective arsenal with the aim of making science more accurate, accessible, replicable and, well, better.

After all, if you wanted to get an urgent message to someone today on the other side of the country, you wouldn’t send a homing pigeon just because that’s the way things used to be done. You’d take advantage of all the tools at your disposal. That’s precisely what Nakagawa’s plans are for the next stage of his research program.

Through the use of artificial intelligence and statistical analysis, it’s possible to weed out flawed research, highlighting studies that are missing key information and presenting situations where there are conflicting findings that require further exploration or expertise.

Meta-analysis can draw connections and patterns between the tens of thousands of papers on a topic. Given the vast quantity of data available, with new papers published every day, it’s impossible for any single scientist to sort through the information the way a sophisticated machine trained with the appropriate algorithms can.

And, through methodological development, researchers can create tools and systems to ensure reporting best practices, fixing things from the very beginning of the cycle.

Metascience, meta-analysis and methodological development are the pillars of Nakagawa’s research focus, and he’s quick to highlight that any kind of science, from medicine to the social sciences, could benefit from these tools. However, in order to make progress on some of the world’s biggest challenges, he says collaboration is key.

“We’re facing so many urgent issues, like climate change, and these are multifaceted problems. We need biologists, oceanographers, physicists — all sorts of people, all sorts of scientists,” says Nakagawa. “We’ve been doing OK, but we need to speed things up.”

The centre he’s now at the outset of establishing at the º£½ÇÉçÇø will seek to equip more than 250 early-career researchers with quantitative data and synthesis skills, building capacity in the next generation of scientists.

Even those who will never set foot in a laboratory should get a front-row seat to science, Nakagawa says. So he’s prioritizing outreach as another key component of his plan. He has already penned a dialogue-based course book explaining key statistical concepts, and he has plans for other initiatives that target everyone from an elementary student interested in STEM, to a policymaker seeking a way to understand the latest research findings.

In Nakagawa’s vision, the future of science isn’t solitary geniuses toiling away in isolated laboratories. It’s papers with thousands of authors, PhDs earned in a communal fashion and people around the globe working together towards common goals. “As we improve our science, I think the speed of progress will dramatically improve.”

So, spare a thought for Nakagawa’s solitary days on Lundy Island, where a young researcher’s frustration with missing data sparked a vision for transforming science itself.