Week 3: Verify
Welcome to Week 3: Verify!
Lead: Sanjana
This week is designed to help you understand how scientists critically analyze and verify scientific findings. We also wanted to give you a sense of how researchers work to do science in an honest and transparent way.
Please feel to reach out to Sanjana directly with any questions, concerns, or comments at sanjana@open-discovery.com. We are also happy to share additional learning resources with anyone who would like to explore a specific topic further.
To complete Week 3:
1) Watch the Week 3 asynchronous lesson videos.
2) Attend the live session on Google Meet on Sunday, August 2 from 7:00–8:15 PM EDT, if you are available.
3) Complete the Week 3 assignment by Sunday, August 2 at 11:59 pm EDT and submit your response to Google Classroom. Since the live session is on the same day as the due date for the assignment, please feel free to reach out with any questions about the assignment any time this week.
Week 3 Assignment - Look into a paper’s scientific verification
Choose a scientific question or topic that interests you. It can be from your assignments from Week 1 or Week 2 or something new!
Find a scientific paper that explores this question or topic.
With the content from the videos in mind, please look through either the paper’s methods, results, or discussion and then write about one thing you think the researchers did to verify their results or be rigorous and transparent about their science.
Some examples of things you could look for are:
Use of controls and/or replicates
A type of statistical analysis they used
P-values or reports of statistical significance
Discussion of sample size or power analysis
Reporting AI use
Discussion of the limitations of their experimental design
STAR methods or similar detailed reporting of methods
Asynchronous Lessons
Lesson 1 - Rigor and Reproducibility in Science
Lesson 2 - Statistics used for Scientific Verification
Lesson 3 - The Pressures of Scientific Publishing
Lesson 4 - Responsible AI use in Science