Abstract

The properties of the human mind affect the quality of scientific knowledge through the insertion of unconscious biases during the research process. These biases frequently cause overestimation of the effects under study, thereby violating the reproducibility of the research and potentially leading to incorrect conclusions in subsequent research syntheses. We explored the level of knowledge about biases and attitudes to this problem by analysing 308 responses of ecology scientists to a specifically developed survey. We show that knowledge about biases and attitude towards biases depend on the scientist’s career stage, gender and affiliation country. Early career scientists are more concerned about biases, know more about measures to avoid biases, and twice more frequently have learned about biases from their university courses when compared with senior scientists. The respondents believe that their own studies are less prone to biases than are studies by other scientists, which hampers the control of biases in one’s own research. We conclude that education about biases is necessary, but not yet sufficient, to avoid biases because the unconscious origin of biases necessitates external intervention to combat them. Obligatory reporting of measures taken against biases in all relevant manuscripts will likely enhance the reproducibility of scientific results.

Highlights

  • The properties of the human mind affect the quality of scientific knowledge through the insertion of unconscious biases during the research process

  • We evaluate the extent of the knowledge held by ecology scientists regarding different biases and we explore the attitudes of scientists to this problem by analysing the information obtained from a developed questionnaire

  • We discovered a strong bias blind spot in scientific research and found that the strength of this bias varies with gender and with the stage of professional career: the difference in the estimate of biases in one’s own vs anothers studies is two times larger in men than in women and two times larger in senior scientists than in early career scientists

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Summary

Introduction

The properties of the human mind affect the quality of scientific knowledge through the insertion of unconscious biases during the research process. The existing life science knowledge is likely to be considerably biased, and measures to combat cognitive biases affecting research should be urgently developed and implemented as a part of activities aimed at the general improvement of transparency and reproducibility in ­science[21,22,23]. The elaboration of such measures requires information regarding the current level of awareness about biases among scientists and about scientists’ understanding of the danger of biases in their research domain in general and in their own research in particular. We wanted to answer the following questions: (i) To what

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