Elsewhere, I defined open science as “an umbrella term for a family of practices that, when adopted by a researcher, should result in that researcher conducting their work in a more transparent manner, and in a way that generates more robust, reliable, or trustworthy findings”. One thing missing from that definition is thinking about ‘openness’ in terms of making science more open to people/groups who have been historically under-represented in science and academia.

In terms of hallucinations research, this may be about making sure that people with lived experience are involved in our research processes (beyond participation). More broadly, this may be about creating diversity by ensuring the participation of people who are from groups that have been historically under-represented (e.g., because of ethnicity, disability, sexuality or gender, economic disadvantage, religious beliefs, or because they are from the Global South).

Ironically, this issue has been a weakness for the ‘open science movement’.  For example, there is some evidence (see this – https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1921320117 – article) that women are substantially more involved in some parts of the open science movement than others. Beyond empirical studies, there are plenty of instances where people’s behaviour/writing has been (at best) careless, and this has made people from minority/under-represented groups feel unwelcome (see this – https://thehardestscience.com/2014/05/25/does-the-replication-debate-have-a-diversity-problem/ – blogpost).

In this – https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/bropenscience-broken-science – blogpost, Kirstie Whitaker and Olivia Guest describe these problems in more detail, and cover ways in which we can make our research more inclusive and diverse.