The cancer researchers Glenn Begley and Lee Ellis made a rather remarkable claim last year. In a commentary that analyzed the dearth of efficacious novel cancer therapies, they revealed that scientists at the biotechnology company Amgen were unable to replicate the vast majority of published pre-clinical research studies. Only 6 out of 53 landmark cancer studies could be replicated, a dismal success rate of 11%! The Amgen researchers had deliberately chosen highly innovative cancer research papers, hoping that these would form the scientific basis for future cancer therapies that they could develop. It should not come as a surprise that progress in developing new cancer treatments is so sluggish. New clinical treatments are often based on innovative scientific concepts derived from pre-clinical laboratory research. However, if the pre-clinical scientific experiments cannot be replicated, it would be folly to expect that clinical treatments based on these questionable scientific concepts would succeed.

Reproducibility of research findings is the cornerstone of science. Peer-reviewed scientific journals generally require that scientists conduct multiple repeat experiments and report the variability of their findings before publishing them. However, it is not uncommon for researchers to successfully repeat experiments and publish a paper, only to learn that colleagues at […]