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Majority of Landmark Cancer Studies Cannot Be Replicated
New submitter Beeftopia writes with perhaps distressing news about cancer research. From the article: "During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 'landmark' publications — papers in top journals, from reputable labs — for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development. Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature (paywalled) . ... But they and others fear the phenomenon is the product of a skewed system of incentives that has academics cutting corners to further their careers."
As is the fashion at Nature, you can only read the actual article if you are a subscriber or want to fork over $32. Anyone with access care to provide more insight?
Update: 04/06 14:00 GMT by U L : Naffer pointed us toward informative commentary in Pipeline. Thanks!
I inevitably run into those who say "Science wouldn't allow that" (like my friend who's still in the field).
Well, science is rather like democracy in that regard. It doesn't prevent mistakes, but what makes it better than other things people have tried is that it has a mechanism for correcting them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Given the expense, I flat don't believe that a private company just decided to replicate 53 studies.
And he claims that authors "made" his team sign confidentiality agreements. How do authors force that?
So, he claims, he can't even tell us which studies failed.
Now he works at a different cancer research company. Conflict of interests?
I don't doubt that we've got problems in the "medical industry", but the linked article reeks of bullshit.
Has anyone looked at Nature?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
These "scientists" are ranked and compensated by the number of publications they produce, so they publish one piece of research and try to pass it off in as many periodicals as possible, essentially representing old research as brand new. This compensation system has obscured the true purpose of publication: what was once a means to disseminate your work to the general population is now a means to get you and your lab more money.
The incentives do cause number to be more important than quality, but as a grad student who does understand the concept of self-plagiarism, I gotta tell you that every single academic (not other students, actual professors) I've encountered will try to walk that line. It's not that we republish the same paper, it's that when we get results we're encouraged to think, "how many papers can we divide this up in?" So you publish one part in a journal, then an incremental improvement that you already had in a second journal (while citing the paper in the first one, but they are still fairly similar work). Depending on the nature of those incremental improvements, I can see someone trying to publish a paper that crosses the line.
We need to change the culture to have journals publish papers that are just verification of data from other papers. That's the ideal work for grad students that are just starting to get in the field anyway, and it helps peer review immensely. Once you have a degree and a job doing research, you can start working on publishing new work, but then you'll be more worried about publishing half-baked ideas because you know there's an army of grad students just waiting to see if they can replicate your results.