Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie

Not that pre-registration is a silver bullet. Many scientists who pre-register their study still fail to publish it (or at least report the results) in the time period that’s mandated by the trial registry. Others, despite pre-registration, still make changes to their analysis after it begins.46 In the case of clinical trials, the scientists aren’t just flouting best practice, they’re breaking the law – and yet one investigation by the journal Science in 2020 found that over 55 per cent of trials had their results reported late to the US government’s trial registry. Suffice to say, this isn’t how it was supposed to work: pre-registration is only beneficial if the registered plan is followed. For clinical trials, we need to tighten up the enforcement and punishments for these ‘clinical scofflaws’ (for example, banning them from receiving government grants in future, or from publishing in certain journals for a certain period).47 For other fields, where there’s no legal obligation to follow your registration, we need to find other ways to ensure that scientists stick to it. The UK’s National Institute for Health Research, for instance, manages to get nearly all its funded projects published, in part because it withholds 10 per cent of the grant money until the report of the trial appears.48