Editorial: Research reproducibility and preventing fraud

Abstract

The reproducibility of experimental data is an essential part of scientific research as it is the absolute requirement that the results presented in a scientific manuscript must be reproduced by other studies. If such validation fails, which happens rather frequently (1–3), the most integral part of science is violated, which results in inconsistent scientific data presented to the public. The damages might be considerable since reproducibility issues lead to overall mistrust in science, pave the way for complotism and jeopardize academia-industry partnerships, which are essential to translate scientific advances into innovation. One of the devastating consequences is that often there is reviewers' bias who often reject studies with different findings from the first published study in the field resulting in a loss of people's efforts, money, time, and more importantly of useful information that could guide further research in the field. Many funding bodies have thus set strict rules for preventing research fraud resulting from intentional data manipulations. Considering the increasingly complex nature of modern scientific research with many different experimental techniques or study protocols employed to conduct studies, Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine introduced this Research Topic to provide a set of guidelines to increase research reproducibility and prevent fraud.