Tackling the reproducibility crisis requires universal standards

When a UK parliamentary enquiry was hold into peer reviewed publishing about 5 years ago I urged the enquiry to encouraged journals to adopt a checklist approach. I envisioned a mix of Y/N responses, scales from 1 to 5 (or even 10) and space for addition comments. The aim was for the reviewers to be clear about whether papers had dealt satisfactorily with various issues and to force the reviewers to consider more than just a few issues. It's pleasing to see that at least one journal has adopted this approach and I hope others outside my area of expertise have done likewise. Even within one subject research methods vary (e.g. tests for viruses) so standardised methods would unnecessarily limit researchers' options. What's required is that the reviewers pay close attention to the detail of the method described in the paper and indicate (a) if it is described in sufficient detail and (b) is a suitable method to use. The "checklist" review system would be very appropriate for dealing with this. Further, I am often annoyed when heavy reliance placed on a single paper (e.g. the paper that led to the banning of DDT, Mann et al's "hockey stick" temperature graph). More needs to be done in the way of papers that confirm certain findings, preferably by using different methods of analysis. We can't do that if standard methodologies are enforced but we can do that if reviewers pay close attention to whether methods are fully described.