@Penn based, @NINDS4Rigor funded initiative. Creating a free, online curriculum to learn and practice scientific rigor. Join us!
Joined October 2022
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Meet C4R, the Community for Rigor! 👋
Scientific rigor is a skill we can build. We create free lessons, activities, and teaching resources for researchers, students, and educators.
Follow for practical research tips and scientific discussion. c4r.io
We'll be at #SfN2026, will you?
We'll be co-hosting a happy hour with @neuromatch on November 16.
Or come visit our booth (#2524) to talk about scientific rigor!
Looking for more details? airtable.com/appWO8lu7xm3VSd…
Going to #SfN2026?
Find Neuromatch at booth #2638 in the nonprofit section.
We’re also co-hosting a happy hour with @comm4rigor on Monday 16 Nov.
Let us know you’re coming to SfN and we’ll send you the details! airtable.com/appWO8lu7xm3VSd…
A warm welcome to Kaela S. Singleton, PhD, (@kss_phd) our new Curriculum Team Manager! 🎉
We're thrilled to have her experience and perspectives on the C4R team as we continue building a community committed to rigorous research.
How can you share your data more effectively?
Over the next 4 weeks we'll be discussing our free online unit, Data Sharing: Quality data, open access. We'll be sharing researcher's perspectives, short lessons, and activities from the unit.
We hope you'll join the conversation!
#DataSharing
Learning formats include:
📖 Learn independently with self-paced Books
🥼 Bring a Meeting deck to your next lab meeting
🎓 Teach with our ready-to-use Class decks
Pick what fits your learning or teaching goals.
C4R materials are developed with scientists and educators from universities across the U.S., including Harvard Medical School, Smith College, Johns Hopkins University, Virginia Tech, and many more. Supported by NIH/NINDS.
Explore the free resources: c4r.io
#ResearchMethods
"Transparency is a fetish"
In our new segment, #RigorTakes, Dr. Zac Parker discusses scientific transparency with C4R founder Konrad Kording, professor at University of Pennsylvania.
Agree, disagree, or somewhere in between?
What can well designed controls tell us about an experiment?
From guarding against false positives to strengthening confidence in results, thoughtful control design is a pillar of rigorous research.
#ExperimentalDesign
We spent the last few weeks discussing controls. Next up, our Data Sharing Unit!
You can see the full curriculum at c4r.io/units
Careful design and thoughtful reporting are cornerstones of rigorous research.
Careful experimental design incorporates several principles like: selecting appropriate controls, choosing the right randomization method, avoiding bias, and choosing the best sample size for the experiment.
Writing readable code, creating visualizations to tell your data story, and sharing data effectively are all pieces of thoughtful reporting.
C4R has created free online modules for each of these topics for you to teach or learn from.
What other topics are cornerstones of rigorous research?
#ScientificRigor #OpenScience
C4R, the Community for Rigor, creates free, practical learning resources for researchers and educators. We help people put scientific rigor into practice through lessons, activities, and ready-to-use online teaching materials.
Take the course, adapt for your classroom, or incorporate into your next lab meeting. See the full curriculum at c4r.io/units
C4R uses many established frameworks in developing our curriculum. However, for controls, the existing frameworks didn't fully capture the ways researchers address variables.
Karen Word, Senior Curriculum Developer at C4R, gives us an inside look at why this framework was created.
To understand what this framework means and how it fits into your own research check out the full interview on our YouTube channel: buff.ly/7l4QHmN
#ResearchMethods #ScientificRigor
Avoiding these 3 common control issues produces more rigorous research:
1. Insufficient negative controls
Solution: add targeted negative controls
2. Human bias hindering controls
Solution: apply a masking design
3. Uneven variable distribution
Solution: use randomization
What control issues do you most often see?
If you'd like to learn more or adopt these materials for you classroom or lab explore our full curriculum:
c4r.io/units
What would change if your lab or classroom fully adopted C4R's free scientific rigor materials?
We asked researchers this question. They shared hopes of better, more rigorous, and higher quality science. To them, adoption would mean improved collaboration, increase awareness, and promotion of higher quality experimental designs like randomization.
What would change if your lab or classroom adopted C4R's materials?
#ResearchCulture #TeamScience
