Free Republic

Lack of rigour is often blamed on pressure to publish. But ethnographers can find out what truly keeps science from upping its game.A decade ago, the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke convened a workshop on how to improve the rigour of preclinical research. Its recommendations were surprisingly straightforward: scientists should mask (or ‘blind’) their studies; randomize; estimate appropriate sample sizes; and specify rules for data handling (S. C. Landis et al. Nature 490, 187–191; 2012). Ten years on, many preclinical scientists still do not take these basic steps. Ask most advocates of rigorous science why this is,...

Eight years ago, a team of researchers launched a project to carefully repeat early but influential lab experiments in cancer research. They recreated 50 experiments, the type of preliminary research with mice and test tubes that sets the stage for new cancer drugs. The results reported Tuesday: About half the scientific claims didn’t hold up. “The truth is we fool ourselves. Most of what we claim is novel or significant is no such thing,” said Dr. Vinay Prasad, a cancer doctor and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the project. It’s a pillar...

A couple of years ago, Julia Strand was trying and failing to replicate a study she’d published. At the time, she was an assistant professor without tenure, and the original study had presented her most exciting finding to date. But when she and her co-authors tried to replicate it, they got the opposite results. Then one night, Julia discovered why. In her original code, she’d made a tiny but critical error, and now, with her reputation and job on the line, she was going to have to tell the world about it. Science is often said to be “self-correcting”—through peer...