Robin Brooker
Areas of interest
Robin Brooker is an expert in research (mis)practice, scientific integrity, epistemic harms, and quantitative methodology, working at the intersection of criminology, sociology, and social psychology.
He is particularly interested in:
- Behaviours and practices that cause epistemic harms and undermine the reliability of scientific knowledge.
- How systemic, cultural, psychological, and organisational pressures shape researcher behaviour and practice.
- The relationship between researcher motivations, norms, and integrity.
- The conditions that support - or constrain - academic freedom, and its role in maintaining scientific integrity.
Background
Robin Brooker’s research is concerned with strengthening the veracity, trustworthiness, and reliability of knowledge, ensuring that science and scholarship can progress on solid foundations. He investigates the social, psychological, cultural, and systemic factors that shape research (mis)practice, questionable research practices (QRPs), misconduct, epistemic crime, and constraints on academic freedom. His work contributes to criminological and sociological understandings of how knowledge is regulated, how institutions shape behaviour, and how professional wrongdoing and epistemic harms can be prevented. Through this, he aims to inform improvements to research culture and enhance public trust in science.
Robin’s doctoral research, funded by the ESRC, examined the determinants of QRPs and misconduct using survey and experimental methods. He has also led cross-national studies on academic freedom and self-censorship and is studying scientific behaviour and publication dynamics. He has published in Systematic Reviews and Research Integrity and Peer Review, and presented his work at the 2024 World Conference on Research Integrity. He primarily uses quantitative methodologies, including surveys, experiments and computational methods.
He has held visiting and research roles at the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford University (METRICS), the London School of Economics, City, University of London, and the University of Essex and served as Research Culture and Quality Intern at Sense about Science. His expertise has informed Elsevier and Economist Impact’s Confidence in Research report, and he has written publicly on research ethics and misinformation for the LSE Impact Blog and Elsevier.
He is open to collaboration and engagement beyond his current projects. This includes contributing to conferences and workshops as a speaker or panellist, providing expert advice for consultations or media features, and supervising postgraduate research at both Master’s and PhD level.