When someone first described to me the
evidence-based medicine movement, I responded (shocked): "Is that like science-based science? What were they doing before?"
Nature News: In biomedical science, at least one thing is apparently reproducible: a steady stream of studies that show the irreproducibility of many important experiments.
In a 2011 internal survey, pharmaceutical firm Bayer HealthCare of Leverkusen, Germany, was unable to validate the relevant preclinical research for almost two-thirds of 67 in-house projects. Then, in 2012, scientists at Amgen, a drug company based in Thousand Oaks, California, reported their failure to replicate 89% of the findings from 53 landmark cancer papers. And in a study published in May, more than half of the respondents to a survey at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, reported failing at least once in attempts at reproducing published data (see 'Make believe').
The growing problem is threatening the reputation of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) based in Bethesda, Maryland, which funds many of the studies in question. Senior NIH officials are now considering adding requirements to grant applications to make experimental validations routine for certain types of science, such as the foundational work that leads to costly clinical trials. ...
A comment from a researcher quoted in the article notes
... a broader need to shift biomedical research from categorical statements and simple schematics to quantifiable hypotheses backed up by modeling and computation, open access to data (itself requiring new approaches and infrastructure) and better application of probability theory and statistics.
See also
Medical science? (are most research findings false?) and
Bounded cognition.
