Abstract
The replication of important findings by
multiple independent investigators is fundamental to the
accumulation of scientific evidence. Researchers in the
biological and physical sciences expect results to be
replicated using independent data, analytic methods,
laboratories, and instruments. Epidemiologic studies are
commonly used to quantify small health effects of important,
but subtle, risk factors and replication is of critical
importance where results can inform substantial policy
decisions. However, because of the time, expense, and
opportunism of many current epidemiologic studies, it is often
impossible to fully replicate their findings. An attainable
minimum standard is "reproducibility", which calls for datasets
and software to be made available for verifying published
findings and conducting alternative analyses. We outline a
standard for reproducibility and evaluate the reproducibility
of current epidemiologic research. We also propose methods for
reproducible research and implement them using a case study in
air pollution and health.
The
full text of the article is available from the American
Journal of Epidemiology
Data
Data for the literature review conducted in the article
"Reproducible Epidemiologic Research" by Peng, Dominici, and
Zeger is available here as a comma-separated-value file (CSV)
and as an R workspace file (.rda).
If you download the R workspace file ('litreview-data.rda'
file) you do not need to download the 'conclusions.csv'
file.
Links
Compendium for "Seasonal analyses
of air pollution and mortality in 100 US cities" by Peng et
al.
The questionnaire
used to review articles.