Article by Steven Bustin - Faculty of Medical Science, Postgraduate Medical Institute, Anglia Ruskin University

The treatment of some scientific topics, particularly in biomedical research, is very much like that afforded to the catwalk fashion industry; something becomes hyped, everyone talks about it and eventually the popular press picks up the topic and generally distort its conclusions, only for the band wagon to move on to the next hot topic. Tellingly, this excitement is usually misplaced and serves more to publicize the particular authors, institutions and journals than it does to contribute to any advancement in scientific knowledge or translational benefit. In contrast, vast amounts of scientific data are published without eliciting any interest whatsoever, leaving the authors to cite their own papers in the hope that their work will, one day, become the hyped fashion. Regardless, the results and conclusions from much, if not most, of the publications of biomedical research are questionable: the majority are not reproducible  and so do not satisfy one of the fundamental requirements of scientific research. There are a number of reasons why published results cannot be reproduced:

1.

The original research was carried out incorrectly, for example without sufficient regard for sample selection, template quality or inappropriate data analysis.

2.

The attempts to replicate results are flawed because the information provided in the publication is not sufficiently detailed and explicit.

3.

The replicating laboratories do not have sufficient understanding of the uncertainty associated with their experiments. For example, the high precision of methods like digital PCR can generate different results, but a more focused look at reproducibility may show they are all describing different parts of a data distribution, which, once understood, would allow a definition of what can actually be measured.

Any of these explanations is objectionable and results in billions of dollars being wasted every year . This message is, of course, not new and over the last twenty years or so there have been numerous, often high profile, publications lamenting this state of affairs and proposing solutions, most recently summarized in a review article published in this journal.

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