My input for the OSTP RFI on reproducibility « Victoria Stodden

"Until Sept 23 2014, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Whitehouse was accepting comments on their 'Strategy for American Innovation.' My submitted comments on one part of that RFI, section 11: '11) Given recent evidence of the irreproducibility of a surprising number of published scientific findings, how can the Federal Government leverage its role as a significant funder of scientific research to most effectively address the problem?' follow ... This comment is directed at point 11, requesting comments on the reproducibility of scientific findings. I believe there are two threads to this issue: a traditional problem that has been in science for hundreds of years whose traditional solution has been the methods section in the scientific publication; secondly, a new issue has arisen over the last twenty years as computation has assumed a central role in scientific research. This new element is not yet accommodated in scientific publication, and introduces serious consequences for reproducibility. Putting aside the first issue of traditional reproducibility, for which longstanding solutions exist, I encourage the federal government, in concert with the scientific community, to consider how the current set of laws and funding agency practices do not support the production of reproducible computational science ..."