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.
