Community for Rigor (C4R) is a new NIH/NINDS-funded initiative that aims to teach scientific rigor at scale. With the involvement of Duquesne, Harvard, Smith, and Johns Hopkins, it is organized by UPenn.
The Community for Rigor is built around the idea of aggregation: the CENTER at UPenn serves as a central hub that coordinates the effort, builds web infrastructure, and acts as producers and editors. CENTER also facilitiates grassroots efforts to improve rigor in science. The subject matter expert groups at METERS, hosted at other universities, prepare written materials on critical subjects about scientific rigor. We are always looking for more METERs to join to create excellent materials.
C4R is supported by the NIH, with funding of >$20M from NINDS. Read the Press Release here.
Production team (based at UPenn)
















Duquesne




Harvard Medical School (HMS)



Johns Hopkins University (JHU)





Smith College



Our mascot

Our mascot is the Rigorous Raven. It’s inspired by our love of alliteration and rigor in science. It was designed by Kevin Rusch. Rigorous raven loves to learn. Their favorite sentence is “Rigorous research requires replicable results”.