Response to “Science has lost its way, at a big cost to humanity”

A few years ago, the Los Angeles Times published an article titled “Science has lost its way, at a big cost to humanity.” In the article, the author claims that billions of dollars in funds are at risk of being lost due to dishonesty in science. The author cites the studies published by Amgen and a group at Bayer Healthcare which reported that most of the findings of the papers which they were basing their biotech and pharmaceutical research could not be reproduced. The falsehoods produced, the author suggests, are the result of scientists wanted to produce exciting data and the current peer review process.

               Being that we, the scientists, are the targets of this accusation, it is easy to dismiss these claims as the concerns of a layman. We understand that falsehood is inherent in a competitive publish-or-die environment but accept it as a necessary evil for the gears of scientific progress to turn. With results comes funding and with funding comes more results. The results which are dishonest or biased may persist for some time but eventually those studies coming behind those results will not be able to stand on their own and will call the validity of the first study into question. And while the peer-review process is not perfect in ridding dishonest studies from science, it is still valuable in deterring a lot of it.

               However, I feel that concerns of a layman are sometimes telling of problems to which those within a field are blind, apathetic, or complicit. The competitive publishing environment which is the norm for science worldwide has serious issues which do hinder progress, ultimately. On top of that, many scientists do not question this system or consider any alterations to the system which may improve research for everyone.

               Despite this, however, I feel the author does overlook a few things. First, the author seems to cast bad light on scientists for not following up most studies as these studies by the large biotech and pharmaceutical companies revealed so much about the reproducibility of these other major studies. Most scientists do not work for multi-billion dollar companies which can afford to devote time and resources to checking other peoples studies. The world of science is mostly a web of independent researchers. Additionally, the studies they were checking were cancer and blood research which often require study of live animals, studies which can take enormous amounts of time and labor for a single lab to complete. To his credit though, the author did include a quote in his article which stated that research seeking to just check another lab’s work would likely not get funded. Second, the author seems to imply that scientists think that peer review is sufficient to promote honest research which I feel is not the belief of most scientists. Reproduction of results is really one of the best indicators of good science, and I do not believe most scientists ignore it in favor of belief in the infallibility of peer review. As it stands, peer review is one of the most efficient ways to check others’ work before it is presented to the larger community. However, I do believe that some sort of amendment to the peer review process is called for to reduce bias in choosing what does and does not get published (without hindering the speed of publication dramatically).

Overall, I feel this article, while having some misunderstandings of the field, is a good reminder to scientists that our methods can always be improved upon and that there are people outside of our research bubble which do care about and are affected by the work we do.