The credibility of scientific research: Insubria's InsIDE Lab among the contributors to an article published in Nature

The Università degli Studi dell'Insubria is among the contributors to an international study published in Nature, one of the world's most authoritative scientific journals, which demonstrates how different researchers can reach different conclusions even when working from the same data.

The paper, entitled "Investigating the Analytical Robustness of Social and Behavioural Sciences" – link to the article: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09844-9 – forms part of the international SCORE project (Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence), a large-scale research programme coordinated by the Center for Open Science and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which involved 865 researchers in analysing the credibility of scientific findings in the social and behavioural sciences.

Within this context sits the contribution of Insubria's InsIDE Lab, led by Raffaello Seri, Full Professor at the Department of Economics and coordinator of the "Department of Excellence 2023–2027" project. Massimo Rusconi, affiliated with the laboratory, is also among the authors.

In the project, 457 independent analysts from numerous international institutions conducted 504 re-analyses of data from 100 previously published scientific studies. The researchers worked on the same datasets and the same research questions, whilst retaining freedom in their methodological and statistical choices.

The results show that scientific conclusions can vary significantly depending on the analytical decisions adopted. Whilst many re-analyses confirmed the main conclusions of the original studies, the effect estimates and the level of uncertainty in the results often differed substantially.

The research thus highlights the role of so-called "analytical choices" in the production of scientific results. Every empirical analysis entails numerous decisions — for instance, on how to handle data, which statistical models to use, and how to interpret results — all of which can influence the final conclusions.

Insubria's contribution forms part of this international debate on the robustness and transparency of research, confirming the University's role in developing rigorous and innovative methodologies for data analysis in the social sciences.

According to the authors, these findings do not call into question the credibility of scientific research, but rather demonstrate the importance of making the full range of possible analyses more transparent. Approaches involving multiple independent analysts, or that systematically explore different analytical strategies, can help strengthen the robustness of scientific conclusions.

• In the photograph, Professor Raffaello Seri