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What a 7-Year Replication Project Says About Your Lab

Ellen Ovenden, MSc | May 20, 2026
Ellen Ovenden, MSc | May 20 2026

A 2025 preprint from the Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative reported replication success rates between 20% and 44% across 56 Brazilian biomedical labs.1

But the most revealing finding was not the replication rate itself. It was how often reproducibility broke down through day-to-day operational issues, including unclear protocols, inconsistent documentation, and missing process controls.

In the webinar The Reproducibility Revolution: Making Science Transparent, Dr Olavo Amaral, founder of the Brazilian Reproducibility Network, explained what those numbers looked like in practice. The project took 7 years, cost about $240,000, and started 143 replications. 53 were later invalidated because of protocol deviations, bad documentation, insufficient sample size, or other process problems.

This is what matters for your lab. Reproducibility often breaks in ordinary work.

Ellen_Template_JoVE Blog_Quote Graphic_2026

 

What Your Lab Can Do Differently

Dr Amaral used the replication study to highlight how reproducibility can be improved:

  • ▪️ Define the basics clearly.
    Even basic experimental terms can be interpreted differently across labs. Spell out experimental units, controls, and key terms before the work starts so everyone is working from the same assumptions.
  • ▪️ Set the limits of adaptation.
    Protocols often leave room for local interpretation, and sites fill in missing details based on habit, experience, or available resources. Decide early which parts of the protocol can be adapted and which must stay fixed.
  • ▪️ Standardize data capture early.
    Small errors and weak documentation accumulate over time. Missing records, swapped labels, and incomplete notes can undermine a study even when the science is sound.
  • ▪️ Build quality checks into the process.
    Quality control often comes too late, when problems are harder to fix. Build checks into the workflow so protocol drift, missing data, and inconsistencies can be identified before they compromise the study.
  • ▪️ Treat coordination as part of the method.
    Multicenter studies often lack shared standards and coordination. Reproducibility depends on more than the written method alone, so oversight, communication, and documentation need to be built into the study from the start.

The Next Step

These are not small operational details. They shape whether another lab can trust, repeat, and build on your work.

The webinar highlighted a core challenge in reproducibility: written methods alone often leave critical procedural details open to interpretation. When labs execute protocols differently, even small variations can affect outcomes.

Visual method communication can help reduce that ambiguity by showing experimental steps, setup, timing, and technique more directly across research teams.

Learn more about publishing visually to improve the reproducibility of your work. 

  1. Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative. (2025). Estimating the replicability of Brazilian biomedical science [Preprint]. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.02.645026

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