Epistemology and metascience in medicine and biology: purpose and challenges of a new journal

Abstract

Medicine and biology generate an expanding volume of evidence, yet growth in publication output does not necessarily produce an equivalent gain in knowledge reliability. Reproducibility, publication bias, analytical flexibility, reporting quality, academic incentives, and the responsible use of emerging technologies require scientific scrutiny of scientific practice itself. This journal is founded to integrate two complementary perspectives: epistemology, which examines how knowledge claims are justified and bounded, and metascience, which empirically studies how research is designed, conducted, communicated, and evaluated. Its purpose is to provide an international forum for original studies, reviews, methodological analyses, essays, and debates on evidence, causality, reproducibility, open science, integrity, statistics, diagnosis, and artificial intelligence. Its central ambition is straightforward: to help make biomedical science more transparent, critical, verifiable, and useful.