Functional MRI Data Sharing, Best Practices and Reproducibility
In this episode, Peter Bandettini meets with Tom Nichols, Remi Gau and Jack Van Horn to discuss the motivation for a set of best reporting and analysis practices. This provides insight into how the COBIDAS (Committee on Best Practice in Data Analysis and Sharing) in OHBM was started. They talk about the reproducibility crisis in fMRI and how it is being addressed. They discuss how the culture of fMRI has changed from isolated scientists doing N=20 studies to a connected web of researchers collecting and contributing to fMRI databases of high quality data for the purpose of revealing ever more subtle information. Through this work, the field aims to achieve robust biomarkers that are clinically useful in diagnosing and treating diseases. They also discuss many of the issues and decisions made in analysis, and how this may contribute to irreproducible results. Last, they consider the ongoing and future global efforts to increase data transparency to make fMRI a more effective tool.