Big Problems in Reproducibility

Dr Tom Hardwicke is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Sydney, and Senior Editor for Statistics, Transparency, and Rigour, at the journal Psychological Science. He works at the intersection of psychology and meta-research (‘research-on-research’) on projects related to transparency, bias, peer review, scientific criticism, and reproducibility.

Prior to joining the University of Sydney in 2025, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the University of Amsterdam, and Stanford University. He received his PhD in Experimental Psychology from University College London in 2016.

Lonni Besançon is an Assistant Professor of Visualization at Linköping University, Sweden, a 2023 fellow and local lead for ASAPbio, and the editor in chief of the Journal of Visualization and Interaction (JoVI). He obtained his PhD from Université Paris Saclay under the supervision of Tobias Isenberg from Inria and Mehdi Ammi from LIMSI/CNRS.

He specializes in two primary research areas: developing and studying new interaction techniques for volumetric data visualization, and employing innovative visualizations to enhance statistical data interpretation. He is also dedicated to methodological improvements in research, particularly in detecting and mitigating questionable research practices and enhancing the transparency, robustness and reusability of research results and materials.

Notably, his sleuthing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic have garnered international recognition, with scientific outlets such as Science acknowledging his contributions. He is best known for his advocacy for better research practices and his sleuthing work, which earned him distinctive titles such as “troublemaker for truth” (ABC), a “white knight of academia” (Le Parisien) and “dogged critic” (Science). In outreach efforts he tries to make other researchers embrace post-publication peer review and academic sleuthing.

I’m a PhD student at Eindhoven University of Technology, where I study how researchers can use theories to make quantitative predictions about plausible effect sizes. Before starting my PhD, I co-led a meta-scientific project on misinterpretations of frequentist statistics. More broadly, I’m interested in how statistical inference and research design can help scientists develop stronger theories.

Dr Manuela Marescotti originally trained in Biotechnology at the University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy), and later earned a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh (UK), specialising in neurodegeneration research using fruit flies as a model organism.

Having worked on diverse research projects across academia and industry, she became very interested in applying her research experience to scientific publishing, in critically evaluating the quality of scientific manuscripts. She has served as a scientific editor for the journal Brain Communications since 2019.

Within this professional context, she also pursued the cause of ECRs’ training, leading initiatives such as the Reviewer Academy, the Observer Programme and Internships, designed to open the doors of the Brain Communications journal to the public and train young researchers in academic publishing.