Octopus by Dr Alex Freeman

About the speaker

Before joining the Winton Centre in 2016, Alex Freeman had a 16-year career at the BBC, working on series such as Walking with Beasts, Life in the Undergrowth, Bang Goes the Theory, Climate Change by Numbers and as series producer of Trust Me, I’m a Doctor. Her work won a number of awards, from a BAFTA to a AAAS Kavli gold award for science journalism. In addition to developing and making television series, Alex worked with associated content across a whole range of other media – designing websites, games, formal learning resources and social media content – to bring science to the widest possible audience. Now back at the Winton Centre she has a particular interest in helping professionals such as doctors, journalists or legal professionals communicate numbers and uncertainty better, and in whether narrative can be used as a tool to inform but not persuade. She is an advocate of open research practices and the reform of the science publishing system.

About the talk

Alex is going to talk about Octopus – her idea to create a new, dedicated primary research record, designed to incentivise good research practices and improve the scientific process. Instead of the traditional ‘paper’ being both the way to announce or ’sell’ conclusions and the primary record of exact, replicable methods and data, Alex will show how separating the latter into Octopus and breaking down the unit of publication from a paper into smaller publications could change the incentive structure, speed up research and hence revolutionise science.  She will also, hopefully, demonstrate it as a working platform for the first time (hot-off-the-press)!