Interdisciplinary Analysis as a Possible Method for Bias Reduction and Reproducible Science

It’s time science took a step back and looked at its methodology from other perspectives. As mentioned from other blog posts and articles, it is clear that the scientific culture favors positive results, paradigm-shifting headlines, and subpar reproducibility standards. These negative aspects are often discussed separately, but perhaps would be best considered together as part of the culture of academic scientific discovery. Then we can recognize the inherent difficulty in changing any one of those issues. Changing culture is not easy and involves the breakdown of pride.

I suggest that science stop thinking its problems are unique and look at how other fields deal with inherent human characteristics to make objectively sound building blocks. Compare this to the building of skyscrapers. There is unavoidable room for human error. However, our skyscrapers do not collapse frequently enough for us to be afraid of them. In The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gwande, this example is shows how using construction workers use checklists to prevent human errors. He applies this to the operating room, a place so technical a general checklist would not be expected to work. Yet, when a checklist is put in place to remind operating teams of simple tasks such as administration of preoperative antibiotics, patient complications declined significantly. The checklist changed the culture of the operating room to allow the nurses to feel comfortable stopping physicians from proceeding with the surgery if they did not adhere to the checklist.  This intern allows for more reproducible patient outcomes. 

In the problem at hand, reproducibility can be mitigated through publication “checklists” for critical information regarding reagents and methodology. This clearly does not take out human error, just as it doesn’t remove human error from the performance of a heart transplant, but it mitigates major human biases and increases predictable outcomes.

The book also refers to aviation for how to make a good checklist- including “is each item not adequately checked by other mechanisms”. Our current “checklists” for tenure-track faculty may encourage bias towards certain criteria. For example, high impact journal publications may be regarded more highly than well-documented and thorough research projects producing negative data. Tenure checklist modifications may include criteria for a complete evaluation of select publications rather than simply journal titles.

Atul Gwande’s work shows how looking to other fields can reveal novel approaches to seemingly complex human errors. If we always simply shied away from changing culture, where would we be today? Well, we’d have a lot more unnecessary postoperative infections, to say the least.