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No publication without confirmation
From: "Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2017 07:41:03 +0000
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com> Date: Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 2:13 AM Subject: [Dewayne-Net] No publication without confirmation To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com> No publication without confirmation Proposing a new kind of paper that combines the flexibility of basic research with the rigour of clinical trials. By Jeffrey S. Mogil & Malcolm R. Macleod Feb 22 2017 <http://www.nature.com/news/no-publication-without-confirmation-1.21509> Concern over the reliability of published biomedical results grows unabated. Frustration with this 'reproducibility crisis' is felt by everyone pursuing new disease treatments: from clinicians and would-be drug developers who want solid foundations for the preclinical research they build on, to basic scientists who are forced to devote more time and resources to newly imposed requirements for rigour, reporting and statistics. Tightening rigour across all experiments will decrease the number of false positive findings, but comes with the risk of reducing experimental efficiency and creativity. Bolder ideas are needed. What we propose here is a compromise between the need to trust conclusions in published papers and the freedom for basic scientists to explore and innovate. Our proposal is a new type of paper for animal studies of disease therapies or preventions: one that incorporates an independent, statistically rigorous confirmation of a researcher's central hypothesis. We call this large confirmatory study a preclinical trial. These would be more formal and rigorous than the typical preclinical testing conducted in academic labs, and would adopt many practices of a clinical trial. We believe that this requirement would push researchers to be more sceptical of their own work. Instead of striving to convince reviewers and editors to publish a paper in prestigious outlets, they would be questioning whether their hypotheses could stand up in a large, confirmatory animal study. Such a trial would allow much more flexibility in earlier hypothesis-generating experiments, which would be published in the same paper as the confirmatory study. If the idea catches on, there will be fewer high-profile papers hailing new therapeutic strategies, but much more confidence in their conclusions. The confirmatory study would have three features. First, it would adhere to the highest levels of rigour in design (such as blinding and randomization), analysis and reporting. Second, it would be held to a higher threshold of statistical significance, such as using P values of P < 0.01 instead of the currently standard P < 0.05. Third, it would be performed by an independent laboratory or consortium. This exceeds the requirements currently proposed by various checklists and funders, but would apply only to the final, crucial confirmatory experiment. Unlike clinical studies, most preclinical research papers describe a long chain of experiments, all incrementally building support for the same hypothesis. Such papers often include more than a dozen separate in vitro and animal experiments, with each one required to reach statistical significance. We argue that, as long as there is a final, impeccable study that confirms the hypothesis, the earlier experiments in this chain do not need to be held to the same rigid statistical standard. This would represent a big shift in how scientists produce papers, but we think that the integrity of biomedical research could benefit from such radical thinking. [snip] Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/> ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/18849915-ae8fa580 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-aa268125 Unsubscribe Now: https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-32545cb4&post_id=20170227024122:1F98AF70-FCC0-11E6-8656-FD88084C1F79 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- No publication without confirmation Dave Farber (Feb 27)