(In)Credible Research - ECR Conference Online-Conference 2021

Studies that present clean, positive (i.e., hypothesis confirming) results, tell good stories, and make spectacular claims are more likely to be published than studies that find negative (i.e., not different from null), inconclusive, or mixed results and report them transparently.
The title we chose refers to this tension: Science needs to be credible rather than incredible.
Publication bias, lack of reproducibility, replicability, and transparency damage the credibility of research and distort the representation of knowledge in the literature. In the long run, this is detrimental to science as a collaborative enterprise that seeks to approximate truth about the world we live in and erodes the public's trust in the research they fund.

For a more comprehensive discussion see Simine Vazire's article "Do We Want to Be Credible or Incredible?" published in the Observer of the Association of Psychological Science: here.

Last year, ECR 2020 “(In)credible Research - for Credibility, Integrity and Reproducibility of Research” took place in October as an online conference for the very first time. Approximately 150 participants, from a broad range of disciplines including medicine, physics, law, neuroscience, economics, and psychology , attended the conference and around 50 actively took part in the open discussion. We aimed to hear from all participants about their experience as ECRs in Berlin and recommend changes to improve the situation of ECRs in Berlin.

According to the evaluation from ECR 2020, (In)credible Research conference was highly recommended to young researchers as a great opportunity to think outside the box and shine light on inherent problems of the scientific community; as well as a great platform to transfer knowledge on good scientific practice, to raise awareness of the credibility crisis in research and to discuss challenges.

Information on the lectures and workshops will be provided shortly.

It is possible to receive ECTS points for the active participation in the conference or the Charité will issue a certificate of participation for submission to the doctoral office of the respective university. More information about the calculation of ECTS points at the Charité can be found here.

If you need any assistance to make this conference more accessible, for example an ASL or DGS interpreter, subtitles or large text, please send us an email and we will be happy to arrange it.

Our target agroup
The conference, which deals with facets of good scientific practice in the context of a PhD, is primarily aimed at doctoral students and postdocs from the four BUA partner universities (FU/HU/TU/Charité). Young researchers from other universities as well as students interested in pursuing a doctorate may be admitted if there is sufficient capacity.

(In)credible Research is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, age, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Conference participants violating these rules may be expelled from the conference at the discretion of the conference organizers.