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This month, as part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (RP:CB), we published the results of our first five Replication Studies in the journal eLife. We plan to complete 20+ more replication studies, along with a final meta analysis of all studies conducted for RP:CB. Ultimately, the goal is to investigate the overall rate of reproducibility in a sample of high-impact cancer biology publications and to identify practices that facilitate both reproducibility and an accurate and efficient accumulation of scientific knowledge. The results of the first five of our Replication Studies were mixed; we found that achieving reproducibility is hard. Each of these Replication Studies have elicited varied interpretations about what differs and why; and, ultimately, the results suggest that establishing reproducibility requires iterative experimentation and discovery. All of our work is done transparently; we are openly sharing all of our data, materials, analysis code, and methods upon publication (https://osf.io/e81xl/wiki/home/). Ask us anything about our findings, process, or what we hope to accomplish with this research. We will be back at 2pm EST. Responding are: Timothy Errington, Center for Open Science Alexandria Denis, Center for Open Science Nicole Perfito, Science Exchange Rachel Tsui, Science Exchange Members of the Center for Open Science team, or the Science Exchange team may join us on their personal accounts to answer questions and participate in the discussion as well. Edit: David Mellor, Center for Open Science and Courtney Soderberg, Center for Open Science will be participating on their personal accounts as well. 4:06 pm Edit: This was very enjoyable, thank you to everyone who participated! We’re signing off for now but we’ll be back over the next few hours if more questions and discussions arise

I’m Chris W. Surprenant, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Orleans, where I direct the Alexis de Tocqueville Project in Law, Liberty, and Morality. I am the author of Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue (Routledge 2014), editor of Rethinking Punishment in the Era of Mass Incarceration (forthcoming, Routledge 2017), and co-editor of Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary (Routledge 2011) and Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment (forthcoming, Routledge 2017). My current projects apply knowledge gained from studying the history of philosophy to contemporary issues in criminal justice reform, including the ethics of punishment. I’m also interested in business ethics and examining the connection between human well-being and entrepreneurship. During my first AMA in fall 2015, I was asked a number of questions on issues in moral philosophy; practical ethics, such as our approach to animals, the poor, or adjuncts in the academy; and how to be a successful graduate student and have a better chance of being a successful academic. I’ve been invited back to answer questions about my current work, our for-credit high school program in philosophy and political economy, the academy generally, and anything else that you want to talk about. Ask me anything! Well, almost anything.

Hi Reddit! I’m Allison Campbell, President of the American Chemical Society. Currently I am the Associate Laboratory Director of the Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). A physical chemist by academic training, my research has focused on biomaterials. My research focus is on the role of proteins in biomineralization. During my time in the Materials Science Department at PNNL, I have co-invented a process inspired by biology that allows us to grow bioactive calcium phosphate layers onto the surfaces of artificial joint implants. By mimicking bone, this innovation can extend the life of the implant and reduce implant rejection. I hold a PhD in physical chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a BA from Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA. I have been a member of the ACS since 1985 and in that time have become a member of the National Academy of Sciences Chemical Sciences Roundtable and was named an AAAS Fellow in 2013. One aspect of science I’m most passionate about is promoting science education and sharing scientific information. As often as I can, I share my personal enthusiasm for science with young students and participate in a number of hands-on education programs. As ACS President I feel it’s so important that all us chemists out there should share with the public what chemistry is and how it helps society. This means we need to get as good at science communication as we can. I also feel it is greatly important to foster common principles and practices among the global chemistry community. You can read about these and my priorities as ACS President in my Chemical & Engineering News statement “Pedaling the power of chemistry.” Ask me anything about my ACS priorities of sharing the value of chemistry and building its global principles and practices. You can also ask about my research in biomineralization. Note that as a scientist employed by a federal laboratory, I am bound by the Hatch Act and therefore may not engage in questions of a political nature. Unfortunately, I have to sign off at 9am PST. Thanks for all your questions.

Hi Reddit! I’m Brian Hanley, PhD and CEO of Butterfly Sciences, in Davis CA. I work on gene therapy approaches to aging, HIV/AIDS, adaptation to space, and the future. I designed a system that should be able to rescue late-stage AIDS patients, and GHRH was part of that. However, VCs told me that pharma wouldn’t buy the company because they had drugs for HIV/AIDS and the pharma business model is daily consumption of drugs. Pharma does not like the “surgical model”. I was aware of the potential for health-span extension from the start, and decided to emphasize that. This trial is in its 2nd year, and results look quite promising. However, the same pharma business model issues apply to most of gene therapy. I was recently featured on MIT Technology Review magazine https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603217/one-mans-quest-to-hack-his-own-genes/ I have other motivations for thinking gene therapy is important. I think that we will need it to adapt to settlement of space and other planets. From radiation adaptation and virtual elimination of cancer, to preventing osteoporosis and muscle breakdown, space will be a frontier for gene therapy. I also think it is a way we can use to change our age-bulge demographic problem. When social security was first created, there were around 6 working adults for every retired person being supported. Now, we are heading towards 2. Gene therapy has the potential to change the infirmities of old age and make people strong for life. Ask me anything about gene therapy and how it can be used in space settlement, to treat age-related health issues and HIV/AIDS. (Caveat - I cannot respond to personnel questions, nor can I give out proprietary information.) AMA is now over. It was fun.

The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) conducts scientific ocean drilling expeditions throughout the world’s oceans in search of clues to Earth’s structure and past. The current expedition is Expedition 366: Marina Convergent Margin, aboard the U.S. vessel for scientific ocean drilling, the JOIDES Resolution. The scientists embarking on this expedition hope to learn (1) how sediments, fluids and chemicals move and cycle through the earth’s crust; (2) the role of tectonics and mud volcanoes in transporting fluids and sediments in subduction zones; and (3) how these physical and chemical movements impact living organisms. The research team will use deep sea drilling technology to drill into undersea mud volcanoes near the Mariana Trench, taking core samples of sediments and fluids that they can study on board the ship. By analyzing the chemicals, sediment layers, and microorganisms within the core sample, scientists can answer questions about how rocks, fluids, and chemicals cycle through the earth’s crust, and this affects life on the seafloor and beyond. Studying sediment layers, geochemical cycles, and fluid dynamics in the earth’s crust can tell us a lot about how geological formations (like volcanoes, canyons, and mountains) are formed, and how they change over long periods of time. By extracting cores in subduction zones, scientists can answer questions about how the earth’s crust moves and changes through plate tectonics, and how this impacts life in the ocean and on land. Collecting biological samples of living (and past) organisms in these seismically active regions allows us to study how life on earth may have begun, and how organisms have evolved to survive in extreme environments. A team of 30 scientists from around the globe are on board for two months to work on these questions. Hand-in-hand with the amazing technology required to drill deep into the ocean floor, we are collecting the core samples that hold clues to answer these questions. Thank you to everyone today for your great questions! Our Live session is officially over, but we will check back in th following days in case there are any follow-up questions for us to answer. Thanks everyone, science rocks!

The first observations made about most bacteria include a description of their cell shape. Only recently have we started to figure out how all of these different shapes arise, and to understand their purpose. Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes the deadly epidemic disease cholera, is curved. We’ve known this since its discovery 160+ years ago, but never figured out how or why. Aside from the basic research angle (how does something so small self-organize into a complicated shape?) this question has serious human health implications – the world is currently gripped by a global cholera pandemic, infecting millions and killing over 100,000 annually. We are Thomas Bartlett (graduate student/PhD candidate, bacterial cell biologist) and Benjamin Bratton (postdoc, biophysicist and quantitative biologist), and we discovered the gene (and protein) necessary for V. cholerae curvature, CrvA (for curvature regulator in vibrio A). We found that CrvA curves the cell by causing one side of the cell to grow faster than the other, and developed some new tools/took some cool pictures along the way. We also found that curvature helps V. cholerae to swim in gels, as well as to colonize and pathogenize the host gut. Our paper just came out on Thursday, January 12th, in the journal Cell. We will be back at 3 pm ET to answer your questions, Ask us anything! Here is a write-up of our research! - A great write-up without all of the technical detail; also not behind a paywall! Here is our paper! Find Benjamin Bratton | Twitter | Google Scholar Find Thomas Bartlett | Twitter | Google Scholar EDIT 1: Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we’re live! Thanks for all of the attention and great questions! We’ll do our best to answer them all. EDIT 2: Okay, we are going to call it (for now, anyway)! Thanks for all of the great questions (and answers). We will do our best to get to the rest of the unanswered questions at a later date.

When asked, I used to tell people that I study the impact of pornography use, emphasizing “impact.” I guess I just didn’t want to give the wrong impression (“People pay you to do what?”). So, much of my research has focused on experimental and survey investigations of impact of pornography on sexual thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Some of it even pops up in r/science on occasion. As a sex-positive researcher with half a brain, not everyone likes what I have to say; popular writer Jonathan Van Maren has characterized me as Marlboro Man of porn, and the well-intentioned folks over at yourbrainonporn.com have filed my work under “Questionable / Misleading Studies.” I’m thinking about getting t-shirts printed.. Recently, my work is shifting more towards the nature and structure of sexual materials. What is porn? What isn’t porn? Wow can we best measure porn use in surveys? And how can the content of porn be divided up into psychologically relevant taxonomies? (Specifically, I’m trying to raise money to develop a new tool for crowdsourcing the content description of pornography to this end: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/porn-genome-project-app-science/ or check out http://www.pornforscience.com. Porn for Science - Studying Your Shame). Which now means that I not only study the effects of pornography, but porn itself (“Yes Great Aunt Kathy, I get paid to watch porn.”). I’m currently a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct professor that Western University, where I also earned by PhD in social psychology in 2014. Thanks everybody for your questions! It’s been fun! If you’re interested in talking further with me about research, shoot me an email at tkohut at uwo dot ca

Hi, we are NOAA scientists Amy Uhrin and Carlie Herring and we work to understand and reduce the impacts of trash and other marine debris on our ocean and Great Lakes. Have you been hearing about microplastics in the ocean and wondering what are microplastics? Where do they come from? What’s the big problem with microplastics? And what can I do to help? Of all the marine debris that ends up in these important water bodies, plastics are the most common. While plastics can range from consumer items like plastic bottles and bags to abandoned fishing nets, they all eventually break down into smaller and smaller plastics called microplastics. These tiny plastics can have a big impact on our environment. We’re here from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET today to answer your questions about microplastics in our ocean and what you can do to help. Ask Us Anything! Thank you for joining us today and for your interest in research on microplastics! Unfortunately, we are out of time for today. If you are interested in learning more about microplastics and marine debris research, explore some of these online resources: Plastics in the Ocean NOAA Marine Debris Program Listen to podcast with Amy Uhrin on microplastics Current research

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For decades, pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) has been the prevailing technology used for foodborne outbreak detection. PFGE identifies the pathogen’s DNA fingerprint which is then uploaded to PulseNet, a 20 year old national laboratory network used to detect clusters of foodborne illness. While PFGE and PulseNet revolutionized foodborne outbreak detection, whole genome sequencing (WGS) is the future. How will WGS improve foodborne outbreak investigations? What can WGS tell us that PFGE cannot? Join the following experts for a discussion about how public health and agricultural laboratories work to detect foodborne outbreaks and how WGS will change that work. The panelists are all members of the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) food safety committee. Bryanne Shaw Biology Section Manager Minnesota Department of Agriculture, Laboratory Services Division Proof Stephen Gladbach Unit Chief, Microbiology Unit Missouri State Public Health Laboratory Proof Tracy Stiles Director, Microbiology Division William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute (Massachusetts State Public Health Laboratory) Proof Dave Boxrud Molecular Epidemiology Supervisor Minnesota Department of Health Public Health Laboratory Proof Edit: Ok, we’re out! Thanks for having us! We will continue to check in and answer as many other questions as we can.

Hello there /r/Science! We are a group of researchers who just published a new open access paper in Science Advances showing that ocean warming was indeed being underestimated, confirming the conclusion of a paper last year that triggered a series of political attacks. You can find some press coverage of our work at Scientific American, the Washington Post, and the CBC. One of the authors, Kevin Cowtan, has an explainer on his website as well as links to the code and data used in the paper. For backstory, in 2015 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) updated its global temperature dataset, showing that their previous data had been underestimating the amount of recent warming we’ve had. The change was mainly from their updated ocean data (i.e. their sea surface temperature or “SST”) product. The NOAA group’s updated estimate of warming formed the basis of high profile paper in Science (Karl et al. 2015), which joined a growing chorus of papers (see also Cowtan and Way, 2014; Cahill et al. 2015; Foster and Rahmstorf 2016) pushing back on the idea that there had been a “pause” in warming. This led to Lamar Smith (R-TX), the Republican chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee to accuse NOAA of deliberately “altering data” for nefarious ends, and issue a series of public attacks and subpoenas for internal communications that were characterized as “fishing expeditions”, “waging war”, and a “witch hunt”. Rather than subpoenaing people’s emails, we thought we would check to see if the Karl et al. adjustments were kosher a different way- by doing some science! We knew that a big issue with SST products had to do with the transition from mostly ship-based measurements to mostly buoy-based measurements. Not accounting for this transition properly could hypothetically impart a cool bias, i.e. cause an underestimate in the amount of warming over recent decades. So we looked at three “instrumentally homogeneous” records (which wouldn’t see a bias due to changeover in instrumentation type, because they’re from one kind of instrument): only buoys, satellite radiometers, and Argo floats. We compared these to the major SST data products, including the older (ERSSTv3b) and newer (ERSSTv4) NOAA records as well as the HadSST3 (UK’s Hadley Centre) and COBE-SST (Japan’s JMA) records. We found that the older NOAA SST product was indeed underestimating the rate of recent warming, and that the newer NOAA record appeared to correctly account for the ship/buoy transition- i.e. the NOAA correction seems like it was a good idea! We also found that the HadSST3 and COBE-SST records appear to underestimate the amount of warming we’ve actually seen in recent years. Ask us anything about our work, or climate change generally! Joining you today will be: Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) Kevin Cowtan Dave Clarke Peter Jacobs (/u/past_is_future) Mark Richardson (if time permits) Robert Rohde (if time permits)