“Policies for sharing research data promote reproducibility of published results by supporting independent verification of raw data, methods and conclusions (see, for example, go.nature.com/3oinwy4). Confirmation validates the efforts of the original researchers, reassures the scientific community and encourages others to build on the findings (see go.nature.com/3om9ken). Here we recount our experience of accessing data provided by the authors of two prominent Nature papers.
Our investigations, which took 12 people roughly a year, upheld the conclusions of both papers (V. L. Li et al. Nature 606, 785–790 (2022); T. Iram et al. Nature 605, 509–515; 2022). In each case, we found most of the data online and successfully reproduced most findings after discussion with the authors. When we had difficulty reproducing analyses on the basis of publicly available data and materials alone, the authors provided clarification about data and methods, which resolved most discrepancies.
This positive experience prompted us to generate a checklist to help researchers to facilitate reproducibility of their published findings through sharing of data and statistical methods (see https://osf.io/ps3y9).”