Welcome to the Rigorous Reproducible Responsible Research Integrity at UF (R4I@UF) website! Please visit each month for a new case that may be used as a framework for a brief conversation about best research practices in your lab meeting, research conference, journal club, or any research meeting.
January 2026 Case of the Month: Lack of Transparency
Before watching the video, briefly discuss these two questions. Do you think most people knowingly display a lack of transparency or inadequate reporting of methodological details in published papers? What role, if any, do journals have a role in determining adequate reporting? Click on the video link to watch the scenario (3:24). After watching the video, consider some of these questions.
- Can you relate to a similar experience in your own lab?
- Do you think the corresponding author should have handled the situation differently?
- What could the graduate student or PI have done to determine this without multiple conversations with the corresponding author?
- The corresponding author was very open and transparent with the PI. Do you think this would always be the case?
- In this instance, the PIs had been in communication previously, so it provided Dr. Hansen the opportunity to look for the experimental details. Do you think it is realistic that he would have known specifics about the experiment had this not been the case?
- How would you handle the situation if the corresponding author did not want to provide data or discuss the experiments beyond generalities?
- Would it always be so easy to locate the corresponding author? Alternatively, do you think the corresponding author always would be able to locate the details, particularly if the person who had done the experiments had left their lab and/or if several years had passed since the original paper was published?
- Do you think you or your PI would have been as rigorous about determining why the results weren’t reproducible if you encountered a similar situation?
- Would you have made the controls fresh each time or frozen them for reuse, assuming there would be no degradation?
- Was the experiment designed poorly or was it a simple mistake by those in the lab performing the experiments?
For more information about rigor and reproducibility, see the “Resources” and “Rigor & Reproducibility” links above.
To submit a “Case of the Month” for the R4I@UF website, please contact Wayne T. McCormack, PhD (mccormac at ufl.edu).