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Companion Article - Nature

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483509a.html

Science: Branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged. So says the dictionary. But, as most scientists appreciate, the fruits of what is called science are occasionally anything but. Most of the time, when attention focuses on divergence from this gold (and linguistic) standard of science, it is fraud and fabrication — the facts and truth — that are in the spotlight. These remain important problems, but this week Nature highlights another, more endemic, failure — the increasing number of cases in which, although the facts and truth have been established, scientists fail to make sure that they are systematically arranged. Put simply, there are too many careless mistakes creeping into scientific papers — in our pages and elsewhere.

A Comment article on page 531 exposes one possible impact of such carelessness. Glenn Begley and Lee Ellis analyse the low number of cancer-research studies that have been converted into clinical success, and conclude that a major factor is the overall poor quality of published preclinical data. A warning sign, they say, should be the “shocking” number of research papers in the field for which the main findings could not be reproduced. To be clear, this is not fraud — and there can be legitimate technical reasons why basic research findings do not stand up in clinical work. But the overall impression the article leaves is of insufficient thoroughness in the way that too many researchers present their data.

The finding resonates with a growing sense of unease among specialist editors on this journal, and not just in the field of oncology. Across the life sciences, handling corrections that have arisen from avoidable errors in manuscripts has become an uncomfortable part of the publishing process.