3 ms·
While I applaud this effort, it does concern me that they have chosen to publish only three of the claimed 47 failures to replicate. The Begley that spawned in
by pcrh 11y ago
While I applaud this effort, it does concern me that they have chosen to publish only three of the claimed 47 failures to replicate.
The Begley that spawned in part this debate was seriously flawed for two reasons: the first is that the experiments they performed were not described in any detail, and the second is that the experiments they choose to repeat were clearly not selected at random.
Indeed, the limitations of their initial study may underlie the skepticism that greeted their claim that 89% of studies were not reproducible. Most scientists expected a certain proportion of studies to be difficult to reproduce, but nothing approaching 89%.
So, perhaps publishing details of ~6% of their study is an improvement, but again, ironically, it is not a statistically relevant sample.
- capnrefsmmat 11y agoAccording to the article, these three articles were not part of the original set: > In 2012, Amgen researchers made headlines when they declared that they had been unable to reproduce the findings in 47 of 53 'landmark' cancer papers. Those papers were never identified — partly because of confidentiality concerns — and there are no plans to release details now either, says Kamb, who was not involved with that publication. He says that he prefers to focus on more-recent publications.
- pcrh 11y agoThe Begley paper and the whole debate over reproducibility spawned a worthwhile introspection on behalf of the journals, several of which have adapted the information required from authors in response. However, I am distinctly unimpressed by Amgen's failure to live up to the standards it expects of others; not releasing the information required to assess their original claims being their worst offense. In this series, one of the studies, as mentioned in the article, is even a repetition of 4 [1,2,3,4] earlier failed attempts to reproduce the original claim that bexarotene caused a reduction of amyloid in mice [5]; while worthwhile, it is not an impressive contribution. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23704555 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23704555 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23704554 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23704554 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23704553 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23704553 [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4086452/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4086452/ [5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3651582/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3651582/