Paris-Saclay University formed from a merger of several institutions.Credit: Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty
The board of directors of Paris-Saclay University, one of Europe’s biggest research campuses, has failed to elect a president after three rounds of voting. The result reflects an ongoing row over the leadership and management structure of Paris-Saclay, which was formed by merging more than a dozen institutions in 2020.
The two candidates had disagreed about how best to solve problems around staff morale and working conditions at the university but, in a vote on 30 April, neither received enough support to be named president. Yves Bernard, an electrical engineer and former director of Polytech Paris-Saclay, one of the institutions that merged to form the university, won more votes than former president Estelle Iacona in all three voting rounds, but failed to score the 19 out of 38 votes needed for an outright victory.
The stalemate means the recruitment process must start afresh. Paris-Saclay’s temporary administrator, Camille Galap, who has been at the helm since Iacona’s term ended in March, has said that a new call for candidates will be published as soon as possible.
“Clearly, the recruitment process will take quite some time,” says Patrick Couvreur, a pharmacologist at Paris-Saclay. “It is not good news for the university, after all the work that has been accomplished to give it an international dimension.” Couvreur supported Iacona for the presidency.
Flawed organization
Saclay accounts for around 13% of French research and brings together 220 labs, nearly 50,000 students, 8,100 researchers and members of academic staff and 8,500 technical and administrative staff members. The mega-campus has arguably achieved its goal of shining on the world stage: it was the first French university to appear on the Academic Ranking of World Universities’ top 20 list, in 2020, and has done so every year since, placing 15th in 2023.
Massive shake-up of French science system is biggest in decades
But Paris-Saclay’s complex structure has led to a number of issues for its researchers. Paris-Saclay completely subsumed ten faculties and institutes of the Paris-Sud University, while Four of France’s grandes écoles — elite higher-education institutions — along with the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques) and two associate universities were brought under the same banner, but retained control over their budget and recruitment.
The leadership has become increasingly multilayered, says Couvreur, which has increased the number of managers and the administrative burden on staff at all levels. “This is leading to burnout, and is a disincentive to young scientists, who complain they have to undertake work they weren’t hired for.”
In 2021, a study by Paris-based human-resources consultancy Degest concluded that working conditions for staff members had deteriorated since the merger. Despite a massive communications campaign, staff had only a hazy idea of what the Paris-Saclay project was all about, the study said. They also lacked motivation because they felt management did not listen to them, and they questioned the purpose of a number of plans, such as creating links between the various components of the institution, and creating new graduate schools and a bachelor’s-degree institution. Some researchers feared a lack of resources for research, excessive time spent on coordinating operations and bidding for funding, competition between teams for the cash available and heavier administrative workloads.
Competing visions
The two presidential contenders had quite different visions for the future of the university, and views on how to address its problems. Bernard calls for a federated rather than centralized structure, with individual institutions working side by side. The distance of decision-making centres and central services from labs and teaching entities complicates management and procedures, Bernard says.
Iacona’s expired term as president began after she took over the post from education and research minister Sylvie Retailleau, who headed Paris-Saclay until 2022. In her reelection campaign, she said she is against “massive change” and rejects the idea of returning to a federated structure.
“I am in favour of adjusting what we have already in order to build an integrated — not a centralized — structure, where we all decide on policy together, and award the same degrees at each level,” she says.
The university’s board of directors is divided on which is the best approach, and so far shows no signs of rallying behind a single candidate. It is possible that a future contest will include new contenders. Iacona is undecided about whether she will continue her reelection bid, but Bernard intends to stand again. “I can’t identify any particular point in my programme that posed a problem,” he says, adding that he needs “to think about that before deciding on any adjustments”.
Interactive therapeutic robot Paro keeps a resident company at a nursing home in Japan.Credit: Noriko Hayashi/Panos Pictures
Clara Berridge, an ethicist at the University of Washington, Seattle, recalls a story told by a colleague to a group of health-care and social-work students.
Nature Outlook: Robotics and artificial intelligence
An older man in a nursing home was given a robot that looked like a stuffed animal for companionship. He became attached to it and when he later fell ill and died, the nursing-home staff found him clutching his robot companion.
When the class was asked to offer impressions of the scenario they were split: either they thought it was beautiful that he wasn’t alone in his last moments, or they felt it was tragic to die without a human connection.
Robots are an increasingly popular form of therapy for older people with dementia. It’s been suggested that social robots, on which much of the research has been based, can improve people’s moods, increase social interaction, reduce symptoms of dementia and give carers some much-needed relief.
But some researchers are beginning to question if these devices are ready for widespread use with this population. The research proving robots’ worth is sparse, and there are ethical concerns — especially around the idea that their use might reduce human contact in a population that is dearly in need of it.
“If we’re going to invest resources in elder care, I want more staff in the facility so they don’t die alone,” Berridge says. Her grandmother passed away on her own in an understaffed nursing home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Berridge’s grandmother didn’t have the option of a robot companion, but Berridge would not have wanted that for her anyway. “There are so many other things I would choose for her before a robot,” she says.
Early adopters
The robots being used in therapy for older people and people with early cognitive decline fall into two broad categories: service robots and social robots. Service robots are designed to help people in their daily lives, such as by assisting with household tasks or mobility. Developing a robotic assistant that can navigate the home and safely interact with people and objects in its environment remains technologically challenging, however.
Paro robots, shown charging, are among the most common examples of social robots.Credit: FRANCK ROBICHON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
As a result, social robots intended to offer companionship and provide cognitive stimulation are a more common sight in care settings for older people. Some are humanoid in design and intended to act as ‘intelligent’ companions, holding rudimentary conversations and leading games and activities. Other social robots aim to mimic pets that can respond in some way to a person’s voice and touch.
Animals (often dogs) have been used in care settings to help residents to become more social and less agitated, and to improve their quality of life. But animals require a lot of care, whereas a robot pet does not. The most common example of this kind of social robot is Paro. Rather than a dog, the robot, which was designed in Japan, looks like a baby harp seal. A seal was chosen because it would be familiar and approachable, but it is not a common pet so a person would not immediately spot differences between its behaviour and that of the real animal. Paro is typically used to provide a form of pet therapy to older adults in assisted-living facilities, offering companionship and encouraging interaction between residents of the facilities and staff during therapy sessions.
Lillian Hung, creator of the Innovation in Dementia care and Aging (IDEA) lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, purchased the furry bot in 2017 to use with people with dementia who had been admitted to Vancouver General Hospital. Initially, she used it in group therapy for people with dementia, and to help people who were reticent to talk during admission and discharge. But over time, Hung found more uses for Paro.
In one case, the robot came to the aid of a patient in accident and emergency who was hitting staff who came near him, and who kicked a laboratory technician trying to take a sample of his blood. “He had a cardiac condition that needed diagnostics and we had two choices: physically or chemically restrain him, or leave him alone,” Hung says. “Both options were not good.”
Instead, Hung placed Paro in the man’s lap. Paro turned its head as if waking from a nap, opened its eyes, and looked up at the patient. The man asked the robot if it had eaten lately. When Paro started moving around, the man began petting it. While he was engaged with Paro, the staff were able to perform the tests that they needed.
“I hadn’t planned to use the robot for that reason, but in the moment it was useful,” Hung says. “The patient had quality care and safety, and the staff were able to get their work done.”
In 2019, Hung reviewed 29 studies of Paro’s use in older-person care settings around the world with people with dementia1. She found three main benefits of the bot: reduced negative emotions and behaviours among patients, better social engagement and improved mood and care experience. “For an older person who is frail and struggles with language, the robot doesn’t judge,” Hung says. “It offers an unconditional presence. Regardless of what they say, it is always happy to listen.”
Creators of other social robots think that they could also be beneficial for this population. In 2020, Mohammad Mahoor, an electrical and computer engineer at the University of Denver in Colorado, built the third iteration of a humanoid companion robot he calls Ryan, which he began working on in 2013. The robot can recognize speech and facial expressions, and is designed to help reduce social isolation among people with early-stage dementia or depression by engaging them in conversation. Ryan can also remind people to take medications and can lead mental and physical games.
“Mostly these people live alone, their mood is down. We want to improve their quality of life,” Mahoor says. “When you engage residents, they are happier and their family members are more satisfied.”
Mahoor has carried out research in assisted-living facilities with Ryan. In one study, six older people with early cognitive decline were given around-the-clock access to Ryan for 4–6 weeks2. The participants reported enjoying interactions and conversations with Ryan and feeling happier when it was there. However, they did not report feeling less depressed after talking to the robot, and said it was not the same as talking to a real person — a distinction Mahoor understands. “We’re not replacing human interaction, just filling in the gaps,” he says.
Ryan is currently being used in two assisted-living facilities near Denver. The robot stays in the common area. Residents have a card that they can tap on it to spend 30 minutes each day talking, playing games or doing other activities.
Arshia Khan, a computer scientist at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is also working to show that robots can improve the quality of life of people with dementia. Humanoid companion robots, she says, can engage and stimulate people and reduce levels of anxiety and depression. They can also provide respite for carers by leading bingo sessions and playing games with residents in assisted-living facilities.
In one study, Khan and her colleagues placed Pepper and NAO — two humanoid robots built by the firm Softbank Robotics in Tokyo, and then specially programmed by Khan — in eight nursing homes in Minnesota. Surveys were conducted before and after implementing the robots. Compared with nursing homes that didn’t deploy robots, residents of facilities that did felt happier, more cared for, and less tired and frustrated after engaging with the robots3.
Cautious attitudes
Hung expects some resistance from carers to the use of robots. “Not everyone is ready to have robots,” she says. “When we did interviews with organizational leaders, they said money wasn’t the issue — their staff weren’t willing to work with robots.” While running a focus group at one care home, Hung and her colleagues returned from lunch to find the robot that they had brought with them not only unplugged, but wearing a paper bag over its head. “They were worried it was secretly recording them,” she says.
Companion robot Ryan is currently being used in two assisted-living facilities in the United States.Credit: Loclyz
Some older people also have concerns. In a 2023 study led by Berridge, 29 people living with mild Alzheimer’s disease were asked how they felt about robots and other assistive technologies4. Their key concerns were privacy — they wanted to know if the technology was monitoring them — and loss of human connection. Most participants said that they would prefer visits and phone calls from friends and family, or social outings and activities, over what a robot could offer.
In a separate survey of adults who were generally tech-savvy, respondents described social robots as “creepy,” “manipulative” and “unethical”, and said that they offer only the illusion of intimacy5. Most thought that an artificial companion would not make them feel less lonely (see ‘A frosty reception’).
Ref. 4
They were also uncomfortable with the idea that a carer might let them believe that a robot was a real person if they lacked the cognitive ability to know for themselves. Berridge says that this is an issue on which ethicists are split. Some think that if the belief soothes people, then the deception, intentional or not, shouldn’t matter. Others see it as potentially taking advantage of extremely vulnerable people. “Concerns consistently arise over the possibility of withdrawing human interaction and touch, dishonesty, and potential for diminished dignity, which philosophy-trained ethicists will tell you needs to be protected — even and especially when people lack autonomy,” Berridge says.
Uncertain benefits
In addition to concerns that older people and their carers might not be comfortable with social robots, there are also questions about the utility of these devices.
Some users with cognitive decline showed higher stress levels after using the communication robot Chapit.Credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
In a 2022 meta-analysis of 66 studies of companion robots6, ‘telepresence’ communication robots, assistive robots and multifunctional robots being used to support people with dementia, Clare Yu, who studies dementia prevention at University College London, and her colleagues found that many of the robots were generally liked by study participants and could feasibly be used in a nursing home. And most studies reported that the robots did what the authors anticipated: relieved loneliness and isolation, reduced anxiety, and improved quality of life. But the researchers noted significant difficulties as well. Paro, for instance, is heavy, expensive and noisy; humanoid companion robots tend to have speech-recognition issues; and telepresence and multifunction robots were difficult to use.
Yu and her colleagues also don’t think that the design of these studies was sufficient to provide compelling evidence of benefit to people with dementia. According to Yu, many studies didn’t compare robots with other forms of care, such as human interventions. Sample sizes were often too small to draw conclusions, some studies didn’t use well-validated outcomes, and many didn’t appropriately randomize their cohorts. As a result, despite seemingly positive results in many cases, Yu and her colleagues concluded that there was no clear evidence that robots improved people’s quality of life, cognition or behaviour.
“Before I did this meta-analysis, I was really excited,” Yu says. “I thought robots were something that could be used in the future for people with dementia.” She now has serious doubts. “I think they are something that can be used in the future, but not at this present moment. We need some time to do more research to be able to say they are definitely beneficial.”
Another 2022 review7 that analysed nine studies of Paro suggested that the seal robot could improve quality of life for people living with dementia and reduce their use of medications. However, the authors similarly tempered their conclusion by noting that the studies that they analysed were mostly of low to moderate quality, meaning the authors were “cautious to make positive comments on the role of Paro”.
A 2020 study8 from a team of researchers in Japan went so far as to suggest that communication robots might be detrimental for some people with dementia. Twenty-eight older people, 11 of whom had cognitive decline, received sessions with Chapit, a stuffed-toy robot with speech recognition that can play games with users. Measurements of electroencephalogram (EEG) activity and salivary cortisol levels, taken before and after sessions, showed higher levels of stress among the participants with cognitive decline after using Chapit, but not among those in the group without cognitive decline. People with cognitive decline also reported not enjoying their time with Chapit, whereas people without cognitive decline did enjoy it — a finding that matched the EEG results.
A study last year9 from the same group used EEG activity to determine whether Chapit activated participants’ posterior cingulate gyrus and precuneus — parts of the brain that affect reflection, self-consciousness, imagination and prediction. In people without cognitive impairment, these areas were activated by the use of Chapit. In people with cognitive impairment, however, there was no significant change in brain activity.
The allure of technology
With efficacy being questioned, and signs of resistance among carers and prospective users, widespread adoption of robots in older-person care settings faces clear obstacles. “I don’t feel we are ready to have large-scale implementation,” Yu says.
Arshia Khan uses a robot to run cognitive-stimuation quizzes with care-home residents.Credit: Devonna Palmer
She thinks that higher-quality studies and randomized control trials with the power to show clear benefits need to be done first. Then, the findings need to be weighed against the cost of the intervention. “I don’t think there is anyone doing economic evaluations looking to see if the money spent is worth the benefits we gain,” she says.
It took Mahoor upwards of US$6 million to get to the current iteration of Ryan. He has seven units for which he is looking for buyers. Most care homes he has worked with cannot afford to purchase Ryan, so the robot will also be provided through a lease of $1,200 a month for 10 users. Khan, meanwhile, says that the base price for the robots she has worked with is $37,000, not including software, maintenance, or training and support. These costs have fuelled concerns that, should the robots prove effective, they will be out of reach of all but the most well-funded and exclusive care homes.
Caleb Johnston, an anthropologist at Newcastle University, UK, who has studied the ethics of using robots with ageing populations, says that in many areas, including in the United Kingdom, social care is chronically underfunded, even as money pours into social robots. Although “these may help with social and emotional support” he says, the system will still rely on poorly paid carers, often from overseas, “to do the messy work”, he says.
Berridge also thinks it is important that the needs of the people whom the technology is supposed to help are not lost as it rapidly improves. “Are we designing robots with and for people living with dementia? Or are we designing to manage people living with dementia?” she says. “We risk undermining solutions with wider and deeper reach when we don’t do an honest assessment of the nature of the problem being targeted.”
“There’s a lot of hype,” she adds. “I would say that tends to squeeze out critical questioning.”
Climate change can cause anxiety — researchers need to work out when that requires specialist help.Credit: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty
Nearly one billion people worldwide — including one in seven teenagers — have a mental disorder. A growing body of research suggests that climate change is worsening people’s mental health and emotional well-being. Acute heatwaves, droughts, floods and fires fuelled by climate change cause trauma, mental illness and distress. So can chronic effects of global warming, such as water and food insecurity, community breakdown and conflict, as we report in a News feature.
The rise of eco-anxiety: scientists wake up to the mental-health toll of climate change
Surveys are revealing that experiencing the effects of climate change — and awareness of the threat — can lead to psychological responses such as a chronic fear of environmental doom, known as eco-anxiety. Eco-distress, climate anxiety and climate grief are other terms used. In a 2021 survey of 10,000 people aged 16–25 in 10 countries, nearly 60% of respondents were highly worried about climate change, and more than 45% said their feelings about climate change affected their daily lives, such as their ability to work or sleep1.
Make the problem visible
Such reactions to an existential threat are expected, and many people can handle these feelings on their own — but some need specialist help. Although there is anecdotal evidence that people with eco-anxiety are increasingly going to clinics, the psychological toll of climate change tends to be invisible — one reason why it has been neglected.
Researchers and governments need better ways to measure the wide-ranging extent of climate change’s effects on mental health. Data scientists, climate scientists and climate-attribution researchers, among others, should join mental-health researchers in furthering the underlying science. Mental-health professionals also need training and support to provide help. Mental illness is already underdiagnosed and stigmatized, and mental health care in most countries is shockingly insufficient. Climate change makes the case for addressing this crisis even more urgent.
Greener cities: a necessity or a luxury?
One key challenge for researchers is measuring the mental-health burden attributable to climate change and tracking it over time. Most research so far has been conducted in high-income countries, despite low- and middle-income countries experiencing the harshest effects of the warming planet. The day-to-day experiences of people in marginalized groups and Indigenous communities must also be captured.
Much research on climate and mental health has focused on one end of the spectrum of mental health — such as clinical diagnoses, emergencies or suicides2. But when around half the global population lives in nations with one psychiatrist per 200,000 people, it is no surprise that many conditions are undiagnosed and undocumented. Better monitoring and sharing of clinical mental-health data are needed. Researchers must develop and track standardized ways to measure milder or more fleeting forms of eco-anxiety and distress that fall outside standard diagnoses, and work out when interventions are needed.
A call to action
Some steps are already being taken. Researchers are, for instance, trying to develop global mental-health indicators that can be linked to weather and climate data, as part of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, a collaboration of specialists from more than 50 academic institutions and United Nations agencies. The group welcomes collaborators to further this work, says Kelton Minor, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute in New York City who is leading the collaboration’s effort on climate and mental health.
Making cities mental health friendly for adolescents and young adults
A top priority must be developing and evaluating ways to effectively reduce climate change’s mental-health burden while strengthening the resilience of communities that are particularly at risk. Existing tools and treatments — such as cognitive behavioural therapy, which helps people to challenge unhelpful thoughts and behaviours — will be part of the solution. Some studies suggest that, for individuals, taking action to combat climate change could also help to manage their eco-anxiety3: a double win.
The problem amounts to a call to action on all fronts. The constant drip of research adding to evidence of a climate crisis — as well as leaders’ inaction — is itself probably a source of eco-anxiety and frustration. More than 55% of young people in the 2021 survey said that climate change made them feel powerless, and 58% that their government had betrayed them and future generations1.
Those who experience debilitating effects on their mental health caused by climate change need help from specialists. The many others who are scared or angry, but otherwise not unwell, need to know that these feelings are normal — and if they can harness their unease to spur action, they could help themselves, others and the world.
At the same time, it must also be recognized that world leaders’ inaction is a cause of distress — and action by governments is what is needed to soothe it.
The phone or computer you’re reading this on may not be long for this world. Maybe you’ll drop it in water, or your dog will make a chew toy of it, or it’ll reach obsolescence. If you can’t repair it and have to discard it, the device will become e-waste, joining an alarmingly large mountain of defunct TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, cameras, routers, electric toothbrushes, headphones. This is “electrical and electronic equipment,” aka EEE—anything with a plug or battery. It’s increasingly out of control.
As economies develop and the consumerist lifestyle spreads around the world, e-waste has turned into a full-blown environmental crisis. People living in high-income countries own, on average, 109 EEE devices per capita, while those in low-income nations have just four. A new UN report finds that in 2022, humanity churned out 137 billion pounds of e-waste—more than 17 pounds for every person on Earth—and recycled less than a quarter of it.
That also represents about $62 billion worth of recoverable materials, like iron, copper, and gold, hitting e-waste landfills each year. At this pace, e-waste will grow by 33 percent by 2030, while the recycling rate could decline to 20 percent. (You can see this growth in the graph below: purple is EEE on the market, black is e-waste, and green is what gets recycled.)
Courtesy of UN Global E-waste Statistics Partnership
“What was really alarming to me is that the speed at which this is growing is much quicker than the speed that e-waste is properly collected and recycled,” says Kees Baldé, a senior scientific specialist at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and lead author of the report. “We just consume way too much and we dispose of things way too quickly. We buy things that we may not even need, because it’s just very cheap. And also these products are not designed to be repaired.”
Humanity has to quickly bump up those recycling rates, the report stresses. In the first pie chart below, you can see the significant amount of metals we could be saving, mostly iron (chemical symbol Fe, in light gray), along with aluminum (Al, in dark gray), copper (Cu), and nickel (Ni). Other EEE metals include zinc, tin, and antimony. Overall, the report found that in 2022, generated e-waste contained 68 billion pounds of metal.
Courtesy of UN Global E-waste Statistics Partnership
An independent team could replicate select experiments in a paper before publication, to help catch errors and poor methodology.Credit: SolStock/Getty
Could the replication crisis in scientific literature be addressed by having scientists independently attempt to reproduce their peers’ key experiments during the publication process? And would teams be incentivized to do so by having the opportunity to report their findings in a citable paper, to be published alongside the original study?
These are questions being asked by two researchers who say that a formal peer-replication model could greatly benefit the scientific community.
Anders Rehfeld, a researcher in human sperm physiology at Copenhagen University Hospital, began considering alternatives to standard peer review after encountering a published study that could not be replicated in his laboratory. Rehfeld’s experiments1 revealed that the original paper was flawed, but he found it very difficult to publish the findings and correct the scientific record.
“I sent my data to the original journal, and they didn’t care at all,” Rehfeld says. “It was very hard to get it published somewhere where you thought the reader of the original paper would find it.”
The issues that Rehfeld encountered could have been avoided if the original work had been replicated by others before publication, he argues. “If a reviewer had tried one simple experiment in their own lab, they could have seen that the core hypothesis of the paper was wrong.”
Rehfeld collaborated with Samuel Lord, a fluorescence-microscopy specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, to devise a new peer-replication model.
The replication crisis won’t be solved with broad brushstrokes
In a white paper detailing the process2, Rehfeld, Lord and their colleagues describe how journal editors could invite peers to attempt to replicate select experiments of submitted or accepted papers by authors who have opted in. In the field of cell biology, for example, that might involve replicating a western blot, a technique used to detect proteins, or an RNA-interference experiment that tests the function of a certain gene. “Things that would take days or weeks, but not months, to do” would be replicated, Lord says.
The model is designed to incentivize all parties to participate. Peer replicators — unlike peer reviewers — would gain a citable publication, and the authors of the original paper would benefit from having their findings confirmed. Early-career faculty members at mainly undergraduate universities could be a good source of replicators: in addition to gaining citable replication reports to list on their CVs, they would get experience in performing new techniques in consultation with the original research team.
Rehfeld and Lord are discussing their idea with potential funders and journal editors, with the goal of running a pilot programme this year.
“I think most scientists would agree that some sort of certification process to indicate that a paper’s results are reproducible would benefit the scientific literature,” says Eric Sawey, executive editor of the journal LifeScienceAlliance, who plans to bring the idea to the publisher of his journal. “I think it would be a good look for any journal that would participate.”
Who pays?
Sawey says there are two key questions about the peer-replication model: who will pay for it, and who will find the labs to do the reproducibility tests? “It’s hard enough to find referees for peer review, so I can’t imagine cold e-mailing people, asking them to repeat the paper,” he says. Independent peer-review organizations, such as ASAPbio and Review Commons, might curate a list of interested labs, and could even decide which experiments will be replicated.
Lord says that having a third party organize the replication efforts would be great, and adds that funding “is a huge challenge”. According to the model, funding agencies and research foundations would ideally establish a new category of small grants devoted to peer replication. “It could also be covered by scientific societies, or publication fees,” Rehfeld says.
A controlled trial for reproducibility
It’s also important for journals to consider what happens when findings can’t be replicated. “If authors opt in, you’d like to think they’re quite confident that the work is reproducible,” says Sawey. “Ideally, what would come out of the process is an improved methods or protocols section, which ultimately allows the replicating lab to reproduce the work.”
Most important, says Rehfeld, is ensuring that the peer-replication reports are published, irrespective of the outcome. If replication fails, then the journal and original authors would choose what to do with the paper. If an editor were to decide that the original manuscript was seriously undermined, for example, they could stop it from being published, or retract it. Alternatively, they could publish the two reports together, and leave the readers to judge. “I could imagine peer replication not necessarily as an additional ‘gatekeeper’ used to reject manuscripts, but as additional context for readers alongside the original paper,” says Lord.
A difficult but worthwhile pursuit
Attempting to replicate others’ work can be a challenging, contentious undertaking, says Rick Danheiser, editor-in-chief of OrganicSyntheses, an open-access chemistry journal in which all papers are checked for replicability by a member of the editorial board before publication. Even for research from a well-resourced, highly esteemed lab, serious problems can be uncovered during reproducibility checks, Danheiser says.
Replicability in a field such as synthetic organic chemistry — in which the identity and purity of every component in a reaction flask should already be known — is already challenging enough, so the variables at play in some areas of biology and other fields could pose a whole new level of difficulty, says Richard Sever, assistant director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press in New York, and co-founder of the bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint servers. “But just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean there might not be cases where peer replication would be helpful.”
How to make your research reproducible
The growing use of preprints, which decouple research dissemination from evaluation, allows some freedom to rethink peer evaluation, Sever adds. “I don’t think it could be universal, but the idea of replication being a formal part of evaluating at least some work seems like a good idea to me.”
An experiment to test a different peer-replication model in the social sciences is currently under way, says Anna Dreber Almenberg, who studies behavioural and experimental economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. Dreber is a board member of the Institute for Replication (I4R), an organization led by Abel Brodeur at University of Ottawa, which works to systematically reproduce and replicate research findings published in leading journals. In January, I4R entered an ongoing partnership with Nature Human Behaviour to attempt computational reproduction of data and findings of as many studies published from 2023 onwards as possible. Replication attempts from the first 18 months of the project will be gathered into a ‘meta-paper’ that will go through peer review and be considered for publication in the journal.
“It’s exciting to see how people from completely different research fields are working on related things, testing different policies to find out what works,” says Dreber. “That’s how I think we will solve this problem.”
In a single day, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported more than 10,000 border crossings. On Thursday, people on social media were upset that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t answer Peter Doocy’s question about the situation at the border.
During the day’s press conference, Doocy asked Jean-Pierre about recent data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which said that more than 7,500 undocumented people crossed the border on Sunday, and that number was expected to rise to more than 10,000 a day by the end of the week. The conversation got heated when Jean-Pierre yelled at Doocy for talking over her.
“So, what do you call it here at the White House when 10,000 people cross the border illegally in a single day?” Doocy inquired.
“So, what do you call it, Peter, when the GOP puts forward a—wait, no, no, no, no, no, you can’t,” Jean-Pierre said, talking over Doocy as he tried to clarify the question. “You’re answering my question with a question,” Doocy said.
“I’m answering. OK, let’s move on,” Jean-Pierre says as the two start talking over each other.
“Karine, please,” said Doocy.
Again, she said, “No, no, no, we’re moving on,” and then she pointed to another reporter. “Back there.”
“You said you were going to stop people from crossing the line. Ten thousand people moved…” Doocy said before he was again cut off.
“Peter, I tried to answer the question, but you stopped me,” Jean-Pierre told the other reporter before turning back to the first one. “Shall we go?”
People on social media talked about the back-and-forth between the two, pointing out that Jean-Pierre hadn’t done anything to stop the nearly record number of border crossings. Kevin McMahon, a video writer for Townhall.com, joked about how Karine acts like a replacement teacher.
As of last month, sources told FOX News that the government was holding about 20,000 refugees. NBC News says that after people cross the border, Border Patrol immediately lets anywhere from 100 to 200 of them out onto U.S. streets. A radio host and FOX News analyst, Guy Benson, said it was “pathetic.”
The editor-in-chief of The Post Millennial, Libby Emmons, said, “She doesn’t think Doocy deserves a response. In this clip, I have to say that she reminds me a lot of my evil stepmother. Doug Powers of Twitchy said, “KJP actually said, ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ because she won’t answer for the mess they’ve made on purpose.”
Chris Brunet, a contributor to the American Conservative, said, “As a Canadian, I couldn’t move to the U.S. even if I wanted to, which I do. “SMH, I should have been born in Guatemala.” “It’s called ‘an invasion,’” actor Dean Cain wrote.
“‘What do you call it here at the White House when 10,000 people cross the line illegally in one day?’ The situation is in trouble. “She should say ‘crisis,’” the official “X” account of the GOP said.
