Addressing the problem of "academic risk" in biomedical research
By Ronald Bailey
reason.com
Originally published April 3, 2012
When a cancer study is published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, the implcation is the findings are robust, replicable, and point the way toward eventual treatments. Consequently, researchers scour their colleagues' work for clues about promising avenues to explore. Doctors pore over the pages, dreaming of new therapies coming down the pike. Which makes a new finding that nine out of 10 preclinical peer-reviewed cancer research studies cannot be replicated all the more shocking and discouraging.
Last week, the scientific journal
Nature published a
disturbing commentary claiming that in the area of preclinical research—which involves experiments done on rodents or cells in petri dishes with the goal of identifying possible targets for new treatments in people—independent researchers doing the same experiment cannot get the same result as reported in the scientific literature.
The entire commentary is here.
Thanks to Rich Ievoli for the story. He could have been a contender.
