In January, 50 chemists held a 3-day workshop<\/a> in an airport hotel in Denver. The group was comprised of researchers from various career stages and sectors, including academia, industry, and national labs. All of them were connected by a mutual research theme\u2014homogenous catalysis\u2014and the aim of how to make their science more reproducible.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a constant low-level noise,\u201d especially in the past decade or so, about a reproducibility crisis in science, says Rory Waterman<\/a>, a chemistry professor at the University of Vermont. The workshop discussion arose from an initiative he put together after a US National Science Foundation letter<\/a> in 2022 called for proposals on the topic of advancing reproducibility. Other scientific subfields, including 2D materials<\/a> and biomedical research<\/a>, have initiated similar conversations.<\/p>\n “There are hard dollar signs to making an initial discovery that has poor translatability”<\/p>\n David Laitar , principal research scientist, Dow<\/p>\n Share Fortunately, the consensus from the workshop was that \u201chomogeneous catalysis, on the whole, is pretty stinking reliable,\u201d Waterman says. There are perennial challenges, of course, but hardly approaching the level of a crisis.<\/p>\n In the interest of keeping things that way, the attendees brainstormed a collection of best practices for promoting reproducibility at every level of the research ecosystem. After soliciting feedback from prominent researchers who hadn\u2019t been at the workshop, they published their recommendations on a preprint server<\/a> with an open invitation for more chemists to contribute thoughts on the matter (ChemRxiv 2026: DOI: 10.26434\/chemrxiv.15004014\/v1).<\/p>\n Researchers gathered in Denver to discuss community best practices for catalysis research and what individuals, lab groups, and publishers can each do to support reproducibility.<\/p>\n Credit: \u201cI think the most important thing that we came up with is that there isn\u2019t a silver bullet,\u201d says Jillian Dempsey<\/a>, a professor at the University of North Carolina who served on the workshop\u2019s administrative committee. Ensuring that catalysis research is rigorous and that one lab\u2019s findings can be validated by other labs is a community effort, and everyone has a role to play\u2014from bench researchers and their team leads to journal publishers and scientific societies.<\/p>\n Technology transfer and trust in science<\/p>\n Catalytic reactions are essential to modern life and the global economy, Waterman says. One estimate from 2023<\/a> states that catalytic processes account for over 35% of worldwide gross domestic product. \u201cPeople make drugs, they make polymers, they make other materials, they make other consumer goods. They make agricultural compounds,\u201d and the list goes on, Waterman says.<\/p>\n “When something is not reproducible, then that is not necessarily treated like an isolated incident. It\u2019s treated as a symptom of the [entire scientific] community”<\/p>\n Courtney Roberts , associate professor of chemistry, University of Minnesota Twin Cities<\/p>\n Share The importance of research in this area has been recognized repeatedly. Four Nobel Prizes in Chemistry in the last 25 years\u20142001, 2005, 2010, and 2021\u2014have been awarded to researchers working on homogenous catalysis.<\/p>\n That impact would not be possible if the discoveries had not been reproducible, Waterman says. And yet finding a procedure in the scientific literature and then struggling to get it to work in the lab as reported is a near-universal experience for bench chemists.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing worse than reading a published paper and then trying to reproduce that yourself and finding some facet or variable that was important was not captured properly,\u201d says David Laitar, a principal research scientist at Dow and a member of the workshop\u2019s scientific advisory committee.<\/p>\n Reproducibility struggles have a very literal cost, Laitar says. \u201cThere are hard dollar signs to making an initial discovery that has poor translatability\u201d from the bench toward a commercial process. Having agreed-upon community standards and best practices for reporting such procedures would save time and money, he adds.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dream is [my research] gets used someday for something useful, and so I definitely want things to be repeatable,\u201d says Courtney Roberts<\/a>, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.<\/p>\n Being proactive about reproducibility also goes hand in hand with addressing issues about trust in science<\/a>, according to Roberts. \u201cWhen something is not reproducible, then that is not necessarily treated like an isolated incident. It\u2019s treated as a symptom of the [entire scientific] community,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re implementing best practices so that we can potentially regain the trust of people who haven\u2019t trusted scientists over the last few years\u201d and stay accountable to funding agencies.<\/p>\n Reproducible recordkeeping<\/p>\n There are a staggering number of variables that can influence the fate<\/a> of a catalytic reaction: temperature, solvent, exposure to oxygen, humidity, light, the type of reaction vessel, the order in which reagents are added\u2014even the position of a flask on a stir plate<\/a> can change experimental results. And sometimes key factors don\u2019t reveal themselves until someone from another lab tries to replicate a procedure, only to find that the whole thing was dependent on a trace impurity in a reagent<\/a> or a contaminated stir bar<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the details matter until they don\u2019t,\u201d Waterman says. Which means the foundation of reproducible research is rigorous experimental design and documentation. In this field, he says, bad actors are much less common than well-meaning researchers simply not keeping a clean lab notebook.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily that anyone did any malfeasance. . . . Science has so many variables, and it\u2019s hard to really control every single one,\u201d Laitar says. And the number of variables increases as a reaction is scaled, so it\u2019s crucial to have a reliable and detailed experimental record for those who might want to reference or replicate your work in the future, he says. \u201cIf you make a discovery that does get commercialized, that plant will last longer than your career, potentially.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, individuals are responsible for their own experimental design and record keeping. But principal investigators and team leaders are responsible for setting standards for their lab\u2019s procedures and data management. They should also be having routine conversations with their teams about research ethics and best practices, Dempsey says. She personally reviews her students\u2019 notebooks every year and conducts an annual data management review.<\/p>\n Beyond the bench<\/p>\n In a publish-or-perish culture there might be a temptation to rush to submit journal papers. But if the whole community gets together and agrees that it\u2019s worth taking the time to make sure published reactions are thoroughly investigated and well documented, it will help everyone, Roberts says. And if there\u2019s grassroots adoption of best practices in individual labs, trainees will carry them forward to their own labs and shift the culture.<\/p>\n Roberts says less stigma should be attached to correcting work found to be flawed after its publication. Currently, corrections hurt researchers\u2019 job prospects. She would like to see a system for addressing problems in papers that does not punish people for honesty.<\/p>\n Different journals often have slightly different guidelines for how to structure reaction procedures and compound characterization, Waterman says. Inconsistent guidelines create confusion for chemists publishing new research as well as people trying to replicate it. Ideally, publishers would have best-practice checklists that are the same across multiple journals so that people know what is expected of them whether they\u2019re submitting to Nature or Nature Catalysis.<\/p>\n In the past, print journals limited the amount of supporting information that could accompany a paper. But online journal publishing now gives researchers the ability to include much more, Laitar says. \u201cWe can bolster our supporting information with a lot more details and primary source data than we could just a decade ago. There\u2019s really no reason not to include more.\u201d<\/p>\n “All the details matter until they don\u2019t”<\/p>\n Rory Waterman , professor of chemistry, University of Vermont<\/p>\n Share Another way that journal publishers could support reproducibility is by having supporting information checked as part of the review process. Roberts says the independent journal Organic Syntheses<\/a> provides a good model because all of the procedures are checked for reproducibility before publishing are checked for reproducibility before publishing.<\/p>\n Scientific societies have a part to play as well, Waterman says\u2014for example, by setting curriculum standards and providing training resources for data management and writing papers.<\/p>\n Ultimately, addressing reproducibility is an ongoing effort that is \u201cgoing to take a lot of buy-in across a lot of people and places,\u201d Dempsey says. \u201cIt\u2019s not one person\u2019s responsibility. It\u2019s everybody\u2019s responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/feature--reproducibility-in-catalysis---524451.webp\")
\n A group of people at a small event. A few are gathered around a table that holds a large diagram drawn on a white sheet of paper.<\/p>\n
\n George Stanley<\/p>\n\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2025-bri.jpg\")
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