Next large-scale multilab experiment
About the project
EXPLAIN (Experimental Platform for Large-scale Investigations) is an initiative supported by the DGRI (Direction Générale de la Recherche et de l'Innovation) and the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. The project grew out of a national consultation of the French experimental research community, which identified a shared need for a new collective infrastructure to support the conduct of experiments at greater scale.
Yet experimental social science now faces new challenges: statistical power and sample size requirements are growing, replication and meta-science have become central concerns, and data quality issues such as botting and AI-generated responses are increasingly difficult to control at the scale of individual laboratories.
EXPLAIN's response is to develop a new shared experimental infrastructure that pools volunteer subject databases from partner laboratories across France into a unified national platform, while preserving each laboratory's local autonomy. This gives researchers access to tens of thousands of potential participants, with stronger quality controls, harmonised ethical practices, and significantly reduced recruitment costs.
Beyond its role as a shared infrastructure, EXPLAIN is designed to serve as a hub for large-scale meta-science projects, including multi-lab experiments, replications, and pre-registered collective studies, starting in France with the prospect of future international partnerships.