Rate My Professor Daniele Fanelli

Daniele Fanelli is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. He earned a Laurea in Natural Sciences from the University of Florence in 2001 with 110/110 cum laude, a PhD in Ethology and Animal Ecology in 2005 jointly from the University of Florence and the University of Copenhagen on the evolution of reproductive altruism and social parasitism in primitively eusocial wasps, a Master's in Science Communication from the University of Milan in 2006, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Computer Science from the University of Bath in 2020 with distinction. His career trajectory includes serving as Senior Research Scientist at the Meta-Research Innovation Center (METRICS) at Stanford University from 2015 to 2017, Professeur invité at École de Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l'Information at Université de Montréal from 2013 to 2014, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh from 2010 to 2013, Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the University of Edinburgh from 2008 to 2010, and science writer from 2006 to 2008. Currently, he also holds a fellowship in Quantitative Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Fanelli's research specializations encompass metascience, focusing on the nature of science, scientific misconduct, publication bias, retractions, reproducibility, and the theoretical modeling of knowledge using computational complexity, information theory, statistics, sociology, and philosophy of science. He has developed methodologies to quantify bias and misconduct across disciplines and tested hypotheses on their risk factors through bibliometric techniques. Key publications include 'How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data' (PLoS ONE, 2009), 'What difference might retractions make? An estimate of the potential epistemic cost of retractions on meta-analyses' (Accountability in Research, 2022), 'Do individual and institutional predictors of misconduct vary by country?' (PLoS ONE, 2022), and 'Footprint of publication selection bias on meta-analyses in medicine' (Research Synthesis Methods, 2024). Fanelli has received the Leverhulme Early-Career Fellowship in 2010, Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship in 2008, and LSE Excellence in Education Award in 2021. He delivers invited talks on research integrity and reproducibility, such as 'Research integrity in context' (2025) and 'Cautionary tales from Metascience' (2024), and contributes editorially as an academic editor for PLoS ONE and on boards of Accountability in Research and Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine. His work has significantly influenced discussions on research practices and objectivity in science.