3 ms·
In the 2000s a friend worked at a top 10 pharma company with the fun job of reproducing results from genetics papers... 25% were reproducible. The rest were not
by passwordoops 2y ago
In the 2000s a friend worked at a top 10 pharma company with the fun job of reproducing results from genetics papers... 25% were reproducible. The rest were not, even after communicating with the authors to get conditions as close as possible.
So, yes, the current situation can safely be assumed to pose at least a 25% cost on science. And "productivity" is the wrong term here. The harm of fraudulent/bad science runs much deeper than productivity
- epistasis 2y agoI don't know about your friend, but there was an option piece, not a scientific study, that reported about that number of "landmark" cancer research papers as being "not-reproducible" in industry hands. However, it did not have methods, it didn't say how they were not reproducible, as in a figure or an effect etc. The closest thing to a definition of "reproducible" was a footnote on a table defining it as "sufficient to drive a drug development program," which is not at all the same thing as reproducible. Which is to say, I'm skeptical of these anecdotes.
- passwordoops 2y agoHere is an overview of the three papers of the "Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology" (1). The detailed results are in references 2-3 And if you've only ever encountered a single opinion piece on the reproducibility problem in biology/pre-clinical research, then I highly recommend you do a targeted keyword search. (1) https://elifesciences.org/articles/75830 https://elifesciences.org/articles/75830
- epistasis 2y agoI have read that paper too, but you were referencing the ~25% from your friend in industry, which corresponds to the editorial I cited, not these far more rigorous studies. > then I highly recommend you do a targeted keyword search. There's no reason to be insulting, especially when linking to well known studies.