Marchin,’ marchin’: Most scientists can’t replicate peers’ studies?

From Tom Feilden at at BBC:

From his lab at the University of Virginia’s Centre for Open Science, immunologist Dr Tim Errington runs The Reproducibility Project, which attempted to repeat the findings reported in five landmark cancer studies.

…

After meticulous research involving painstaking attention to detail over several years (the project was launched in 2011), the team was able to confirm only two of the original studies’ findings.

…

Writing in the latest edition of Nature, [Edinburgh neuroscientist Prof Malcolm Macleod] outlines a new approach to animal studies that calls for independent, statistically rigorous confirmation of a paper’s central hypothesis before publication.

“Without efforts to reproduce the findings of others, we don’t know if the facts out there actually represent what’s happening in biology or not.” More.

As we’ve said elsewhere, science’s big problems today are on the inside, not the outside. March if you need the exercise and the friendship, but the big problems are actually back at the desk. What, exactly, is the public supposed to do?

See also: Peer review “unscientific”: Tough words from editor of Nature

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