Bolstering Trust in Science Through Rigorous Standards

Scientists have long considered the research process to be self-correcting; we trust that, even if scientists may sometimes make errors in the lab, those errors will eventually be discovered and corrected as others try to substantiate and extend original research findings. However, as stated in a commentary by NIH Director Francis Collins and NIH Deputy Director Larry Tabak, “A growing chorus of concern, from scientists and laypeople, contends that the complex system for ensuring the reproducibility of biomedical research is failing and is in need of restructuring.” There are examples that indicate that our processes have room for improvement. For example, a 2008 study by the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Therapy Development Institute examined the preclinical effects of more than 70 drugs on the SOD1 mouse model of ALS, and showed that the probability of seeing an effect by chance alone is significant even with only ten animals per group. A 2011 study in Clinical Cancer Research authenticated 122 head and neck cancer cell lines, finding that 37 of them were misidentified and/or contaminated. Many articles publish results from experiments only using animals of one sex; however, a 2005 study in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism found that male and female mice responded differently to treatment with the same inhibitor, which was only evident when reviewing data disaggregated by sex. Could we be doing better? For the past several years, NIH has...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike Grants policy reproducibility rigor Source Type: funding